Las Cruces Rendezvous and the Battle of Carlsbad
by Chris Kenworthy
Summary: After two years away, Max comes back to Earth to find Liz. But he's got two surprises for her - first, they have to deal with an alien monster capable of destroying the world. Then, he wants her to come back to Antar with him. Sequel to 'Fateful Moments.'
1. Chapter 1

That morning began, for Liz Parker, very much like any other day. She woke up when her clock radio started playing something a bit nostalgic for the early Nineties, and she slipped off to the washroom down the hall before many of the other residents of Rimes hall, third floor, had roused from their beds yet. The music she left on, to help her roommate drift more gradually out of dreamland.

For those first few minutes, it didn't really register on a conscious level that it had been two and a half years since she had seen, or heard news of, the great love of her life. In the middle of her shower, though, some other girl happened to mention the name 'Max' out loud, and that was enough to make her gut clench a little bit.

Her tour in the bathroom done, Liz returned to her room, and in the other bed Ava Sullivan was already sitting up and running a hand under her blonde hair to shake it every which way but loose. "Hey, there you are, Parker," Ava said, her gruff tones only half masking a deep affection she had for the other girl. "Is this afternoon Kyle's big game?"

"He's **your** boyfriend, Ava," Liz repeated, a constant refrain. "Has been for... well, more than two years now, right?" Ava nodded sleepily. "So why is would it be my job to memorize his game schedule?"

"It's not a job - nobody pays you for it," Ava shot back. "But you **do** it anyway. You can't not."

"Well, that is true." By this time Liz had nearly finished assembling an outfit for the day's classes - baggy blue jeans, a purple pullover with a close neck, and a pink camisole underneath that. Comfy clothes, something that she felt she needed on this February day, even though it was sixty degrees and change in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Her emotional life had been bleaker than the weather lately. "And no, I think he's got practice today, but no game. That's tomorrow."

"Thanks." And Ava pulled herself out of the bed and onto her feet. "You're a life-saver, cornball."

"Then just once, could you actually use my given name?" Liz replied, but Ava was already charging out of the room in her tank top and panties.

#

Liz heard the name in dining hall, about thirty seconds after paying for her breakfast. That was the first shock to the dreary but normal routine that had settled on her life.

'Serena.' It was a name that had weighed on her for years, for long before her friends left even, and the way that she had found out about it was still so strange, so bizarre, that she wasn't sure what to make of it. Liz had never told anybody but Maria about her visit from Future Max, not really, and now Maria was gone too. At least her sacrifice hadn't been in vain. Wherever they were, Max and Tess were together - not romantically, she hoped, but they were able to watch each other's backs, and fight the same battles. Michael was with them too... except that was only three. 'We're stronger when all four of us are together,' Future Max had told her, and now it was Isabel who wasn't with the rest of the foursome, here at Las Cruces with Liz and the others who had stayed behind. Liz hadn't quite realized that when everybody had been making their plans, and wasn't sure if it mattered now.

In any event, she hadn't even gone into many details about Serena with Maria, even. She hardly knew much herself, just that there was a girl named Serena who would become a great friend of hers, if her life still followed anything like the path that Future Max had remembered. Except of course, that everything _had_ changed. Liz didn't know if she'd still meet this Serena or not. Possibly they'd meet and they _wouldn't_ become friends, even great enemies. But the point was, nearly ever since that day, Liz had been wondering when she'd hear the name Serena and wonder if something big in her life was about to change - if it was the same Serena that Future Max had told her about.

The one thing that she certainly hadn't expected, was that when she turned to that table in the cafeteria, and listened for just long enough to sort out who was 'Serena' and identify that individual's face, she would recognize it.

Recognize the young woman twice, actually, on two different levels. To a certain extent, the classic profile was strongly reminiscent of Isabel Evans, but Liz knew that she wasn't looking at Isabel. There were the hairstyle and the wardrobe, and the makeup style - and Liz knew another, better explanation. Suddenly certain beyond logic or common sense of what she had to do, Liz stepped up close to the table and repeated "Serena?" in just as dumbfounded a tone as she felt, staring straight at Lonnie.

Lonnie/Serena, to give her credit, didn't hesitate or stall. "Oh gawd, Liz... Sorry, guys, we're gonna need a long moment here. Come on, Liz." And she stood up, moving away from the small remainders that were left on her tray with no regret at all, and stood in the aisle between tables, nodding to Liz to choose a free spot where they could sit together.

Liz blinked for a second, trying to adjust to the new developments, and then looked around. A table four or five down from them was half empty, and she led the way there, taking a seat three in from the main aisle, arranging her own tray in front of her. Lonnie circled around the table and sat opposite Liz, looking straight at her. The silence continued for a few seconds longer. "Okay, it's your nickel, speak your piece," Lonnie said, as irreverent as ever.

"One, what are you doing here, and two, why the name 'Serena'?"

Lonnie had to blink. "Okay, I didn't expect you to ask about that - the name, I mean." She sighed. "I dunno, I guess I didn't feel like I wanted a name that had anything to do with Vilandra, anymore. That's not who I am, anymore. Your friends, they seem to find having their own names much more freeing - well, except for Ava. I'm a little surprised she hasn't tried changing it before now, especially given the history there, and her friendship with you."

"Well, I know that Ava has my back, and that she's not interested in Max," Liz said, though she wasn't quite sure why she was explaining this to - to Serena. "She and Kyle are quite happy together."

"Bully for both of them, huzzah huzzah," she drawled. "Anyway, as to why I picked this name - well, it just kinda struck me. The connection with Serenity, and thus peace - that's what I'm looking for these days, Liz, honestly. And there's a cool book that's just come out back in New York, 'Gossip Girl' - but never mind that. It's not really important, just a coincidence. That's what gave me the idea, but never mind."

"Okay, okay," Liz said. In terms of whether Lonnie was the 'real' Serena, she was on the fence - but probably that didn't matter just yet. If somehow Lonnie had found out about the significance of the name to her - like from dreamwalking Liz herself, then she was playing that fact very close - but Liz wouldn't really expect anything less out of such a determined and canny person. "And back up one?"

"Hmm? Oh, right, your first question." Lonnie let out a breath. "I don't suppose you'd buy that I wanted to see if I could get a look at the Quantum computers myself, just for giggles?"

"No, not really," Liz said. "You have to have known that we were already taking classes here - all five of us. Which means that you were deliberately putting yourself into our territory. I think that the last time you ran into Michael, Maria, and Ava, they told you..."

Lonnie smiled a little. "_Michael_ told me," she started, stressing the name. "...not to come to Roswell, or to initiate contact with himself or Maria again. He didn't cover the rest of you when you weren't living in Roswell."

That was the sort of thing that might have slipped Michael's mind, Liz had to admit it to herself. But this sort of nit-picking, 'I'm following the rules' behaviour made her furious, and above all she didn't want to lose her temper in front of the other girl. So she forced herself into the only sort of reaction she could manage that _would_ create the right impression - a superior one. "Very well, I've got the story now, and I'll tell the usual suspects that you're around. When we've come to a decision, we'll let you know. In the meantime, you should probably go back to your friends. I'm done with you now."

Serena's face filled with anger too, and Liz realized that she might have made a dangerous choice in what she'd just said. Lonnie was possibly the single most vicious and powerful alien remaining on Earth, and above everything she hated for anybody else to act superior to her. However, Liz also knew that she was without alien allies, and that she wasn't stronger than Isabel and Ava put together. (Or at least, she hoped these things.) If 'Serena' hurt Liz, there would be a payback out looking for her.

So she just got up, smiled a frosty smile, and headed away from the table. While watching her go, Liz noticed for the first time the relatively tame and sedate student clothing that Serena had chosen, though her choice of colors was still somewhat bold. Had she been sincere about trying to find some peace in her life? Well, that question wasn't one that Liz had to decide for herself.

She did have to eat very quickly if she was going to make it to her biology lab, though.

#

It was on the way to her English lit lecture, (which she took with Ava,) that Liz's routine really took a beating, though. Again, it was a little thing that started it. A person stepped out from a side corridor in the Curtis hall wearing unusual clothing, a jumpsuit full of bright, blocky colors, and her eye was immediately drawn to him, curious once again about a face. And the similar moment of recognition, more amazing in its way than seeing Isabel/Lonnie/Serena in the dining hall.

Max Evans.

She tried to squint at the figure in the unusual outfit, wondering in the back of her mind if she was imagining the resemblance, and if squinting would really help with a delusion. Every so often, she did run into a guy who fit Max's general type and thought she saw him - usually the confusion only lasted a few seconds, but...

Somebody bumped into Liz from behind, because she had slowed down walking when she started squinting, and so she hurried up a bit, and that meant she was walking towards the guy in the jumpsuit, whoever he was, and the guy in the jumpsuit was walking right towards her. It couldn't just be Max, could it? He was on another planet. He couldn't just...

Then again, if he was going to come back from another planet, was it really so strange a way, to show up in her university building wearing an unusual jumpsuit? Was she imagining this whole scenario, to the point where there wasn't even a guy in a jumpsuit?

And then there was nearly no more distance between them, and Max, (she really believed it was him now,) eliminated most of the last of it by wrapping Liz up in a huge hug. "Liz, beloved," he whispered clearly into her ear. "It's so good to see you, but there's a lot we have to talk about. Is it okay if I steal you away for an hour or so?"

Something had thrilled through Liz's nerves particularly when he said 'steal you away,' but the more rational part of her head wasn't so sure. "Max - is it really you? Steal me from whom?"

Max's voice chuckled richly. "Yes, of course it's me - it's only been two years and a bit. Can't you be sure of me?" She didn't answer that. "And - steal you away from your regular routine, I guess, your next class or whatever else you'd be doing."

She made her decision then. "Alright, Lit class can wait. Where do we go from here?"

Max kissed her first, on the lips - not a huge PDA, (though she heard a few exclamations from other students nearby at even that much public intimacy,) and all of Liz's doubts fled as she felt a flash of Max's thoughts - the sensation of Earth rushing away as he left in the Granilith, the singularity of himself and his friends inside the Granilith cone being replaced by a kind of cabin as the Granilith entered warp. Somewhat dazed, she let Max rearrange himself so he was beside her, arm draped around her shoulder, and navigated her towards the same side corridor that he had emerged from. Instinctively Liz let her own left hand slide out and settle at the far side of Max's waist, as if it had always belonged there.

She had to giggle when he opened the door of a broom closet and waved her on in ahead of him. "Just like the eraser room," she told him, as he closed the door behind him.

"Almost like," he told her. "With one minor exception." And Max withdrew a small alien orb from a pocket of his suit, activated it, and in the blink of an eye they both disappeared from the closet.

#

Instantly with a little flash, the two of them appeared in another room, a small box with mirrors on all the walls, so that wherever Liz looked, she seemed to be peering through a crowd of Maxs and Lizs. (There was a faint light source somewhere in the box with them too, but she couldn't immediately identify it through the funhouse mirror craziness.)

She had almost no time to appreciate this effect, though, because after stowing his little orb back away, Max immediately reached out, touched the mirror behind him, and a section of that wall pivoted outwards like a door. Again, Max was pointing the way for her, considerately helping her navigate the little 'lip' of mirrored wall that hadn't come with the rest of the door and that she might otherwise have tripped over. Beyond was a corridor with light blue walls and black trim around the floor and ceiling. (The floor itself seemed to be a pale gray.) Michael was waiting out in the corridor for her, wearing much more conventional Earth clothing - jeans even baggier than hers, and a slightly ripped black t-shirt. "Hey, Michael," Liz started. "It's so great to see you too. Is Maria...?"

Max held up a hand, and Liz immediately trailed off, though she wasn't quite sure why she should. There were footsteps behind her in the hallway, and she turned just in time for Tess to hurry past, so that she had to turn _back_ to see the hybrid girl. Tess, too, was back at home in Earth fashions, actually, the top and skirt she had on were ones that at certain times Liz would have delighted in calling 'trampy' - though not to Tess' face. Certainly to Maria, though.

Max nodded silently at Michael and Tess, and each of them held up a little orb like the one Max had - as if reassuring Max that they hadn't forgotten them. One more nod, and Michael and Tess filed into the mirror box and did something to make the door close behind them. There was a flash - not really from the box, since no light could easily get out of it, but from the alien equipment nearby, and a soft _bang_-ing sound. A curious look on his face, Max reached out to open the box up again, and now it was empty. He let out a long breath.

"Sorry for... sorry for all of the hurryness and lack of explanations," Max said then, putting his arm around Liz again, "but we were on a tight schedule. Our ship is in a fairly low orbit, and it was only going to be within range of Las Cruces for a few minutes. I wanted to go down first, to find you and bring you up here if I could. If I didn't make it in time, then... well, never mind the contingency plans. Things might have been interesting. But everything worked through without a hitch."

"Interesting," Liz repeated, wondering exactly what he meant. If it was just that she and Max would have been spending time down in Las Cruces until the ship came around the next time - well, there was his outfit to think of. Speaking of which... "How come Michael and Tess were able to find ordinary Earth clothes to - to beam down in, and you had to use what I'm assuming is an Antarian uniform of some kind?" She blinked a bit at the combination of black, white, gray, light blue, and darker blue that found their way into Max's jumpsuit.

"A few reasons," Max said. "I didn't have time to spend on wardrobe myself so much, and it's important that I should be in uniform while I'm up here. Royal authority and all that. Plus, I figured that if I was wearing something eye-catching, it might actually save time."

"I have to admit, that last one is a point," Liz told him. "Okay - is Maria with you? Do you have any crew on this ship? Are - are you back to stay? What are Michael and Tess going to be doing?"

"Always so full of questions, aren't you, my darling dear?" Max smiled, and kissed her again. She didn't get a specific flash this time so much as a surge of great love and longing from him - and a tongue in her mouth playing tag with her own. "Michael and Tess - are going to find the rest of our friends and spread the news that we're back, that's the short version of their mission at least. Maria is here, yes, and you'll get a chance to see her and talk to her soon, but I wanted to get you all to myself first for a little while because I know that I won't get any of your attention when your long-lost best friend is in the room." Liz stamped playfully at Max's toes for that line, knowing that she couldn't really hurt him even if she scored, with those heavy boots he was wearing. "Aside from the four of us, three Antarian nationals have come along, to help us manage the ship and assist in our mission."

A mission. Was that Liz's answer to whether Max was 'back to stay'? "Okay, okay, you've got me all to yourself." And this time Liz initiated a kiss, just a soft peck on the lips, and Max smiled back down at her. "What's the plan - talking, making out, or a mix of both? I guess we've both got lots to catch the other up on."

"True, so I suppose it should be mostly talk," Max agreed regretfully, taking her hand and leading her down the corridor of the ship - the way that Tess had come from. "We'll have time for the other stuff later."

The chamber that he led her into this time was clearly his cabin or bedroom aboard ship - a nearly double-wide bunk half set into the wall, clothes in an unfamiliar (Antarian) style mostly hung up, favourite books and some that she didn't recognize. With a gesture, he offered her the choice of sitting on the edge of the (neatly made) bunk or the metal and plastic armchair, and Liz picked the chair. "Okay, so - you haven't really had any news since we left, right?" Max started, smiling a touch sadly.

"No." Liz flung the word back at her, almost an accusation. "No abductees have come around to brief us, no friendly aliens at all, and whenever Isabel tried to dreamwalk you, she nearly exhausted her powers in reaching across the stars. We knew better than to try the whirlpool pendant again after Isabel nearly died the first time she tried _that_, so how else were we supposed to get updates?" She sighed. "There was one minor run-in with some of Kivar's lackeys who were still alive, stuck on Earth, that didn't quite make it to open hostilities. But they weren't too talkative, and I don't think they'd heard much recently anyway."

"Right," Max said softly. "Sorry about the silence, but - well, we **did** try to send someone to 'borrow' a human body and meet with you, like Larek. She - she nearly died, and we didn't think that it was safe to try again."

"Oh - sorry, I didn't realize," Liz muttered. "Okay, so, do you want to start from the beginning with all the little details, or just give me the headlines?"

"Something like the headlines, or else Maria will break in here," Max said with a laugh. "She'll go through it in more detail I think. So - we landed where we were supposed to, met the Liaretian rebels and Michael's clan, and they were happy to see us and started to make plans at once. That's where we met Raydeleen, who's come with us for this trip. She's - Zan and Vilandra's mother, Queen Emeritus Alinda, is still alive, but her health isn't good, and so Rayde is sort of her personal stand-in. She's an amazing woman and a talented leader in her own right, and probably one of the few people without whom the Liaretian movement would certainly have crumbled."

"Alright, with you so far," Liz said. "Looking forward to meeting her, with all of that build-up."

Max chuckled. "Soon enough. Let's see - Michael's cousin, Kelim, pushed them into announcing their marriage bans quickly, and at the same time..."

"Whoa, wait a minute, hold the phone," Liz immediately insisted, even doing a 'time out' gesture with her hands. (And reminding herself of that Friends episode where Ross' British girlfriend completely misunderstood the sentiment of that - but Max would get it, even if he'd been away for a few years, right?) "Michael and Maria are married? I missed their _wedding_?"

"See what happens when you miss your flight?" Max said, grinning just a little. "Maria's got motion captures for you of nearly everything - not quite the same thing as being there, I know, but... well, yeah. It was a beautiful ceremony, and they're really happy together I think."

"Wow - any kids yet?" Liz couldn't help but ask.

"Umm... I, uhh, I think that I'm going to let Maria answer that one herself." Liz considered and decided that meant the answer was not 'no,' though alien things being what they were, it just might be some species of 'it's complicated.' "Can I continue with my own version of the headlines now?"

"Oh, sure, of course, go right ahead," Liz told him.

"So, in the meantime, Rayde started to spread more - propaganda, I guess you'd call it."

"Right, that was the plan that Larek had in mind before you left," Liz said. "Though I guess it wouldn't be up to him to run with the idea. Trying to get Kivar's supporters to desert him, and attract more power blocks to the Liaretian side."

"Yes, there was that, and also something a bit different, kind of an honour challenge," Max said slowly. "I wanted to resolve this issue without a battle, if we could, and that meant giving Kivar another kind of a chance."

"Like a duel?" Liz said, her heart squeezing into her throat, even though obviously with Max sitting in front of her, he hadn't died years ago. "Wasn't that taking a terrible chance? He was this alien warlord, with enormous powers, and you had so many disadvantages - only half Antarian, no formal training in your powers until you got off Earth..."

"Well, yes, there was all of that," Max admitted. "I wouldn't have gone with this unless I thought I had a good chance to kick his ass. They put me through my paces, and some of those things you mentioned could be turned into advantages - being half human gave me some defensive advantages against the use of Antarian powers against me, and being self trained meant that I had a few tricks up my sleeve that nobody would expect."

"So you met Kivar in single combat and vanquished him," Liz repeated, hardly believing it. "What about his lackeys?"

"Well, umm." Max muttered. "I actually tried to spare Kivar's life and just bind his powers, but I guess the guy couldn't stand to live as a failure - he'd kept a knife in reserve and used it on himself when he realized that he wouldn't get to me. I think he wanted there to be some controversy over if I'd had an assassin attack him from the stands or something like that - but enough people, even those not on my side, could tell that I'd beaten him already by that point. There wasn't much point in my using a dirty trick."

"Okay," Liz said, reaching out to take Max's hand and comfort him. He smiled at that, and somehow it seemed the most natural thing to get up from her chair and sit next to Max on the bunk. "And..."

"There were a few lieutenants who started fighting with Kivar's army," Max agreed. "Not so much in his name, as trying to secure Dominions for themselves, but between the Liaretian forces and the majority of Kivar's forces who honoured the terms of the duel, we were able to settle them. That did take a while, though, mostly because of the need to move carefully and avoid killing innocent civilians."

"Of course," Liz agreed. "And probably there were a lot of other details to sort out in terms of the new leadership structure for the planet." Max nodded. "So this is the first chance you've had to get back to Earth, in a shiny little ship - and maybe you wouldn't even have been able to get back here so soon except that there's a mission to take care of here, which probably means hairy alien danger."

"More slimy than hairy," Max put in with a laugh. "But I don't know why I thought I'd have to take a long time explaining all of this to you, you seem to understand it all better than I do, and I lived through it."

"Well, I **am** pretty smart," Liz pointed out with a wide grin. "But respectfully, at this point, I propose that we've had enough talking, and should spend our time another way until Maria comes knocking."

Max actually seemed tempted, and Liz realized that he had his own questions about what had been happening back on Earth while they'd been gone. But the lure of long-unreachable smoochies and maybe a little light petting was too much to resist, and he bent his head slightly to drink deeply from her full lips.

#

"If I'd known that I'd be seeing you again today, I would _not_ have dressed like this," Liz commented a little later, picking her sweater up from where it had landed on the floor. Both of their lustful appetites had been somewhat slaked, and just like when they'd both been back in high school, Liz had regretfully put the brakes on something that might go a bit farther than she was really ready for if they both let it.

"No?" Max chuckled, as if this was a priceless joke. "But you looked adorable, that first moment I spotted you in the hallway. Especially with the sweater and the baggy jeans."

"Hmmh." Liz looked down at the jeans in question - adorable would not have been the word that she'd use, but then, Max **did** see her differently from the way she usually saw herself. That had been what first piqued her interest, after all - well, second, after the alien cells bit. "Come on, are you sure you wouldn't have rather I had on a flirty halter top, and little miniskirt down to, oh, maybe here." She gestured at the appropriate point on her thigh, unsure if that was supposed to be the hemline while she was sitting down, as she was now, or standing up. Maybe it didn't really matter.

"Sounds like Tess to me," Max said, snickering, and Liz threw the sweater at him - not a terribly effective projectile weapon, but it was what she had had to hand. "More generally, aside from a few purely personal preferences and pet peeves that I will inform you about as long as you want to know, you can dress however you like as far as I'm concerned, Liz. Whether that's comfy and casual or 'up to the nines', you will still be beautiful in my eyes, and you will always be the woman that I love."

"Okay," Liz said. "Well, I certainly don't need to wear that as long as I'm up here, it must be eighty-five." She waved at the sweatshirt, which Max had caught in both hands. "And I'm not sure I'll even miss it immediately if we beam back down without it. Can you tuck it away somewhere?"

"Here?" Max sounded surprised, but he was smiling.

"Yeah. I like the thought of having something of mine here in your room." She got up and stretched. "Oh, does the ship have a name?"

"Yes - when we first got it, it was the 'River Serranan', but I rechristened it. 'Czechoslovakia.'"

"Oh, no really?" Liz nearly groaned at the thought of that old whimsy of Maria and herself resurfacing one more time, but she was smiling too. "Okay, well, that pretty much decides me, in an odd way. If Maria hasn't come to find us yet, then I'll go and search her out. I really do want to see her after all this time, I hope you're not disappointed or..."

"No, of course, that's okay. In fact, I can spare you the searching," Max said, and reached up to tap a pair of buttons on a wall control. "Missus Guerin?" he said out loud.

"Don't call me that, Max," Maria's voice sounded clearly from all around them. "Are you finally done monopolizing Liz?"

"She thinks so," Max said with a chuckle. "Asked for you specially. D'you wanna come collect her at my door?"

"Less than a minute," Maria answered, and that was it. Max looked over at her, and then made a production out of opening a sort of drawer that was also built into the wall and stowing her sweatshirt away there.

"If you want, I'll find some way of clearing out a whole drawer for you," he said sheepishly, "but I didn't anticipate the need on the way over here."

"Well, there's no need to hurry - as far as I know," Liz said, and then suddenly the impact of Maria's last words hit her like a countdown. Running up to Max, she hugged him and brought his face down to hers for another kiss, as if they'd be separating for weeks or more again.

The same thing seemed to occur to Max. "Well, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I won't let Maria monopolize you for too long either."

"Okay - and what after that? You said that you'd be stealing me away from my regular life for an hour, Max - do I go back after that?"

"Umm... I hadn't really thought it all through," Max admitted. "I'll be fabricating a more low-profile outfit, and then - we'll play it by ear, I guess?"

"Okay, if you insist." So Liz kissed Max on his right earlobe, and then a chime sounded at the door, followed by a muffled voice of Maria:

"Okay, here you are, Parker, door to door service. Come out already!"

Liz stepped next to the door, and then had a bit of an uncertain moment with not being sure how to open it. Just stepping close didn't seem to work, or even reaching out and touching the door. Max shook his head and pointed to a small black square a little bigger than a playing card, next to the edge of the door on the wall, and Liz moved her hand to touch that. Suddenly the door swung open, and Maria yelped as she jumped backwards, just avoiding getting hit by the edge of it.

"You know, there's a reason why the Starship Enterprise had sliding doors," Liz pointed out helpfully to Max. "Much more convenient in close quarters." She turned to face her old friend. "And you - doesn't that happen _every_ time you signal at the door of somebody's private room? Why didn't you wait well and safely out of the sweep area?"

"Oh, sure, expect logic from me," Maria retorted, giving her a big and friendly hug. Liz realized in that moment how she hadn't generally remembered, when missing Maria, how the other girl was just a few inches taller than her. It was a slightly odd thing to notice, but Ava was nearly as petite as Liz herself, and Isabel was definitely much taller, while Maria fit into an in-between height. Maria must be in flat footwear for me to notice it like that, Liz noted absently, conscious of her own brown suede flats.

And then, something else struck her from her memory, and she backed out of the hug long enough to get a good look at Maria's whole outfit. She hadn't 'dressed native' to blend in at the university campus or anywhere else down on the Earth's surface, as far as Liz could tell, but Maria wasn't in an official-looking uniform like Max was either.

The overall lines of the outfit weren't as exotic as the first impression it gave somehow - just a dress, really, sleeveless, off the shoulder but coming up close to collarbone level, and a hem that stretched down well past Maria's knees. But somehow the details kept tricking Liz into seeing the wardrobe as something much more alien - partly the way detailing that reminded her of a wedding dress or elegant evening gown was paired with designs that would fit better on the breeziest and most casual sundress. The shoes she was wearing were flat indeed, but somehow also sexy boots at the same time, and her light brown hair was down, intricately curled past her shoulders, and hung with coloured ribbons, silvery and gold chains.

Liz stopped staring at her friend, worried lest she let herself get hypnotized or something. "Ma- Maria, you look amazing, and - and like nothing that I'd have ever expected."

"Yeah," Maria agreed in a confident drawl. "You, on the other hand, seem to be letting it go a bit, girlfriend. Come on, you couldn't at least have gone for the jeans that show off your ass?"

Liz let out a single burst of laughter, grinning like a loon. "Yeah, yeah... well, if you must know, I was feeling extremely _depressed_ this morning, because it had been years since I'd heard from four of my **best friends**, including a fairly special guy."

Maria smiled and started to walk down the corridor, waving Liz to come along. "So Tess made it on the list, really?"

"Umm - well, you know." Liz supposed that she had really meant 'three of her best friends and one girl who was starting to grow on me when she took off,' but didn't make a point out of the correction. "So, umm - oh, Max said that - well, that there was some news about kids. Don't keep me in suspense any longer."

A very pained look splashed onto Maria's face, so clear that Liz could even interpret it in profile, but she covered in a few seconds, and stalled. "So, he spilled the beans about the wedding?"

"Yeah, it came up in the headlines, but he didn't spoil any details really," Liz said. Automatically she grabbed for this as an excuse to throw her friend so that she didn't have to talk about the painful thing that children had reminded her of. What if she had lost another baby, on Antar? That would make some sense of why Max had told her she'd have to ask Maria... except, no, Max would have been strong enough to give her a warning, instead of leaving the painful chore to a good friend. "I want to hear all the details, really, and all of the people you met there on Antar, and..."

"I know that you're giving me an easy out, Liz," Maria said softly, her voice pained as she opened a door like Max's and showed her into what was obviously a shared cabin - Michael and Maria's place.

"Then you're pretty good at understanding what I'm trying not to say, even after all this time," Liz said awkwardly. Maria sat down on the edge of the queen-sized bed that dominated the cabin, and Liz sat right next to her, not having to think twice about that.

"I suspect that we'll never really lose that insight into each other, no matter what we do with our lives," Maria pointed out. "But anyway - I think I actually want to tell you the big, heavy stuff first, if you think you're up to it. It'll help to... well, I just think it'll help, okay?"

"Sure, okay, tell me whatever you want," Liz said, putting an arm around Maria's shoulders. Maria mimicked the gesture.

"Okay. I... Michael and I, we have a son. He's maybe a year and a few months old in human terms, and he's so beautiful. He's got my eyes and ears, and Michael's nose and his lips... and curly hair that's a bit hard to tell." Liz smiled and squeezed her friend, guessing that the bad part was yet to come. "And - and since I was two months pregnant, he's lived all of his life inside a biosupport growth pod. None of the doctors are sure when he'll be ready to come out and live in the real world without that barrier and nutritive fluid to keep him safe."

"Oh, god, Maria." Liz's throat choked up even as her mind blanked on anything to try to say. Sure, in one way this was better news than another dead child - Antarian science had found a way to save the baby's life. (She assumed that nobody would have done a thing like this if it hadn't been a matter of life and death - she didn't see any other way that Maria and Michael would have approved of it, at least.) But to have your own child trapped in a kind of suspension like that, unable to truly start his life or interact with the world, stuck in a sort of extended pregnancy to an artificial alien incubator - she'd never thought of it as horrible in this respect when she'd heard of Max and the others being in incubation pods - but they hadn't had parents nervously waiting for them to emerge. In fact, Liz usually only thought of Max coming _out_ of the pod, not of all the decades where he'd slept there. "Pods like Max and the others were in?" she blurted out. "He, your son isn't going to..."

"Take forty years to grow to be age five?" Maria put in. "No, that was a special effect for the Royal Four, because Kivar might grow tired of looking if it took years and years for them to emerge. Danyel is growing at a normal rate, just in a less-than-normal environment." She sighed, and leaned closer to Liz. "There are even times when he's awake, and can see out, though I'm really not sure how much he understands about the outside world. Michael and the others can connect to him, even without touching him directly, and communicate that way. I've been practicing, but I'm not up at that level yet."

That made Liz's eyebrows go up. "Practicing... with alien powers? Is there something you want to tell me about that?"

Maria shrugged. "Nobody's sure, but the leading theory is that when I was first pregnant with Keva, that started changing a bit of my DNA to match an Antarian's. Same sort of thing as when Max saved your life, though the transmission vector is different. Speaking of which, have you been noticing any unusual symptoms or abilities lately, Miss Parker?"

"Umm." Liz blinked in surprise, not having expected this whole subject to come up. "Actually, yes. Only a few little powers, but I've gotten pretty good at controlling them, and no weird flare-ups in about a year. Kyle's starting to go through a bad patch, actually. Ava and Isabel have been working with both of us on training and such. Alex is going to be _really_ upset that you're 'different' now too and he's the last pure human."

"Yeah, he probably will, at that," Maria said, and looked around. "Okay, visual records time?"

"Yes, please!" Liz agreed. "Do you have them on little orbs or maybe something weird that looks like a cheese wedge?"

Maria chuckled. "Not at the moment. Everything's just loaded into the ship's computer memory." She pulled over a little metal card that had been sitting on the bedspread, a little smaller than a paperback book cover and less than a quarter of an inch thick. As she started tapping on different parts of the card, geometrical shapes and colors appeared. Liz started staring at the card, wondering if the visual record would appear on it, and was focusing so intently that Maria had to nudge her attention towards the cabin wall where a huge still picture, in almost hyper-real color, had manifested. "Okay, this is from not long after we landed - Michael and Max, with Raydeleen, and Michael's cousin Kelim."

"Oh-kay, alright," Liz said, trying to force herself to acclimate. The unfamiliar male figure in the picture seemed definitely alien, with strangely different facial features and coloring, while

Raydeleen was easier to relate to somehow, if only because her reddish hair and brown eyes were possible for a human being. "Is Rayde part human?" she asked Maria on a hunch.

"Yeah, actually - something like a quarter or an eighth. Human enough that she'll be able to go down to Earth without a Skin. Most Antarian's can't, you remember."

"Oh, right," Liz said, nodding. "Do you have any moving video on that thing?"

"Yeah, actually - let me see if I can find the full record of the wedding ceremony," Maria told her, beaming. "It may be hard to understand without the language treatments..."

"That's okay," Liz said. "All I want to do for now is look."

So Maria hunted through her 'organizer' for nearly a minute, and then dimmed the light in the cabin as the video started playing. Liz lost her breath into a gasp as she realized just how many Antarians had gathered on some kind of open grassy plain to witness Maria and Michael's bonding ceremony. It was hard to sort out the perspectives, but some of the spectators had to be further away from the wedding party than the length of a football stadium! How much would they be able to see and hear? Especially since there weren't bleachers or raised stands...

And somehow, the beauty of the moonlight, falling over the scene as Maria made her approach to the altar, (fortunately she didn't have to trek all the way the crowd, Liz decided,) immediately set her to crying.


	2. Chapter 2

Liz and Maria had gotten up to Maria's most recent captures of little Danyel in his pod, and Michael and Maria's apartment in the ancient Royal Castle of Antar, when the door signal went off again. "Yeah, what is it?" Maria called out.

"Liz has been up here for nearly three hours," Max pointed out, a bit muffled by the closed metal door, "and we're about to circle over southern New Mexico for the second time since then."

Maria considered that, and hit a few arbitrary spots on her little control plate. After a few seconds the door popped out again. "And so?" Maria prompted, but she was smiling.

Max smiled back from the new opening. He had indeed changed into a new outfit - dark navy blue slacks and a long-sleeved green t-shirt was most of what Liz could identify at this point. "Michael and Tess both called in. They've made contact with most of the usual suspects, and invited us downstairs for lunch. Someplace called... the Norwegian Wood?"

Maria snickered, and Liz giggled too. "Yeah, I never really understood the choice of name either, but it's a nice place," Liz put in. "Just a few blocks away from the edge of campus. Good food and not particularly picky about the dress code."

"Would Maria pass as she is?" Max said with a little smile of his own. Maria made as if to toss her control pad at Max's head, but didn't actually let it fly.

"I... they wouldn't complain, but she might attract attention," Liz said, considering her old friend seriously. "More usually tshirts and cut-offs, what with so many university students. But actually that dress isn't too weird, just a little bit - exotic."

"Yeah, what the hell, I don't think I care enough to come up with something else," Maria said, getting up. "Do you know if there's much on the Norwegian Wood menu without meat in it, Liz?"

"Umm, yeah, I think there's more than just salads... why, have you gone vegetarian on me while you were on Antar?" Liz said, pushing herself into a standing position from the bed as well, and hurrying out the door first to give Max another hug and a kiss.

"Not strictly vegetarian," Maria disclaimed. "It's a bit complicated."

When they got back to what Liz thought of as the transporter room, she thought of something else that might be important. "Do I get one of those orbs to get back up here if I need to? Do you have one, Maria?"

Maria produced a little orb, again from a small purse that Liz somehow hadn't seen her don. "We've only got four," Max told her gently, "and in any event, you haven't been trained in how to use one right. With all four of us in the same place, though, you shouldn't have any problem getting a lift back up to 'Czechoslovakia' again."

"Right, okay," Liz said, smiling again at the whimsical name that Max had given to the little starship. With that she climbed into the mirrored room. "Let's go."

The transporter chamber was a bit crowded with three, but nobody suggested splitting up. With the vague sensation of a flash of light, they were once again in a small and dusty utility closet, but not the same one that Max and Liz had transported up from.

"How did you get co-ordinates for places like these?" Liz asked in a whisper as Max led the way out into a small admin building on the edge of campus near the restaurant.

"Antarian sensors rock," Maria remarked offhand. Liz shrugged and accepted that as her answer.

#

"Hey hey, three cheers for the happy couple!" Alex immediately called out as soon as the three of them had stepped into view.

"Am I to take it that Michael and I don't qualify as a happy couple?" Maria immediately shot back before Max or Liz could figure out how to respond, and a ripple of laughter went down the tables that had been pushed together at the back of the Norwegian Wood's dining room.

"It's not that, Maria," Ava insisted. "We're all incredibly pleased to hear that the two of you are... are doing so well. But - well, but Max and Liz are something different. I've had to watch Liz every day for about a year and a half now, and though she tries to hide it, someone who knows her well could tell how much she was pining away for Max Evans."

"And the same goes for Max, too," Michael admitted quite loudly. "A toast for two people who've been apart way too long, finally reunited."

"No proposing toasts until everybody's drinks have been served," Isabel pointed out. "It's not fair."

"Okay, okay. Somebody remind me when the time is right," Michael said.

"Always, sweetie," Maria promised, settling in next to him.

For a little while, the table was abuzz with the usual sort of small talk about menu selections and a few references to good old times.

"Okay, this probably isn't the best place to talk," Max said, looking around after the appetizers had been delivered. "But there isn't anybody at any of the tables closest to us really, so we probably won't be overheard if we're careful, and time is short."

"If you talk much more quietly than that, Max," Tess pointed out from the other end of the table, "then some people aren't going to hear it all."

"So we can play relay games," Michael put in. He and Maria were near the middle. "Go ahead, Max, it's your show."

"Okay." Max let his hand brush against Liz's as she toyed with a chicken finger and took a deep breath. "There's a more serious reason that the four of us have come back, pretty much as soon as we could manage it - other than to see all of our friends again - and, umm, to settle a few things that were left hanging..."

"Yeah, we got that impression," Isabel said. "Icky alien danger. Make with the details."

Max rolled his eyebrows a little. "Okay, let's see. One of Kivar's most prominent ministers was a really despicable sort of guy, and once there weren't any more pressing priorities Vorjal and I started the wheels turning on prosecuting him for the worst of his dirty deeds during Kivar's reign - Antarian rights crimes mostly, that sort of thing. As soon as he realized that we were serious about it, Greffek, that's the guy's name, he started talking about how he had information that I would find more valuable than convicting him, and that he'd turn it over to the new government in exchange for immunity. Information about a plan that Kivar had followed to destroy Earth, apparently just because we'd been here in the first place."

Liz jumped at this point, reminded for the second time that day of the Future Max incident. "This plan, Max - do you know when the fuse would have gone off? I mean, if you've come here now and time is so critical, does that mean that if Earth gets destroyed, it's a question of days or weeks?"

"No, that's not it," Maria put in, looking at Liz meaningfully. They both knew that Future Max had travelled back from some kind of alien holocaust in approximately the year 2014. "This thing - it isn't able to destroy the Earth yet, maybe not for many years, but it may almost be big enough that we can't destroy it. If we let it get that strong, then it doesn't matter how many years it takes to finish... the job."

"What is this 'it'?" Alex asked. "I assume that we're talking about a... an alien monster of some kind, instead of a robot or a bomb, if it's capable of growing and getting stronger." He cocked his head slightly. "It even sounds a bit like 'Doomsday' from the Superman comics, growing to be nearly invulnerable. He was tricky because whatever hurt him made him tougher."

"The full explanation will take a little while," Max said, "but yes, it's a dangerous alien creature, a Scaventhe beast from Ooolagol seven." Kyle snickered. "Yeah, I know the name sounds silly, but we can't afford to underestimate it because of that. We'll need all the power-talent and additional firepower we can put together in order to be sure of taking it down."

"Then why didn't you bring along a few dozen more Antarian soldiers?" Ava asked reasonably. "Michael mentioned that you've got three crew, and that they're all well trained and good fighters, but couldn't Royal authority have gotten a few more?"

"It's not quite that easy," Tess explained irritably to her look-a-like. "First off, remember that these are Antarian citizens who we'd be asking to volunteer to risk their lives for a faraway planet. Yes, we probably could have gotten some more volunteers, even if Max didn't just order a regiment into action. But beyond that, we'd have needed a viable Husk for each of them to function on Earth's surface, and we'd have needed to build or co-opt a bigger ship to carry everybody."

"Yes, those were more or less the biggest problems with taking a larger task force," Max admitted. "With this ship being available, and two usable Husks, I made the call to ship out with the complement at its current size. We **do** have a considerable amount of useful hardware in one of the cargo bays."

"Two husks?" Alex asked. "I thought there were three Antarians along..."

"One of them won't need to wear a Skin," Liz told him. "She's part human and can handle the air here." Alex nodded in slight surprise. "And, as it happens, I might know where we can find someone else for our team, though convincing her to join up will probably be very tough." Liz reconsidered her words. "Actually, I don't really know 'where' exactly, just that I saw her in the shared dorm dining hall this morning. But I do know who."

Max wasn't the only one who was staring at Liz in surprise, but he was the first to react. "Well, don't keep us all in suspense, Liz - who?"

"She calls herself 'Serena' now," Liz said, looking over at Maria and looking for any reaction, but Maria didn't seem to recognize the name. Maybe that answered her question. "But most of us know her better - some of us very well - as 'Lonnie.'"

"The hell!" Ava nearly exploded, loud enough that Kyle shushed her and people a few tables away turned to look. She reduced her voice to a fierce whisper. "She comes to **our** town, knowing that we were here, and..."

"Don't make a big fuss, Ava," Liz advised her. "I was pissed too, at first - but I'm not so sure - you know how I sometimes get vibes from people now, after spending time with them, like a semi-conscious empathic reaction?" That was for the benefit of Max and the others, to introduce them to the specifics of one of the unusual abilities she'd been practicing lately - or at least practicing the interpretation of her reactions, since everything else seemed to happen without her having any control over it. "This time, I got the feeling that for Lonnie, this is a friendly overture. She wanted me to just happen to spot her, or for one of us to, and she hopes that it'll open up better relations between us."

"Yeah, she tried that tack before," Michael pointed out. "When we were in New York. Keep a close watch on your ring, honey." That last line had been a warning to Maria. "Maybe you should keep it safe somewhere, not wear it, when she's around..."

"Oh, come off it," Maria shot back. "Like I'm gonna let her swipe it _twice_ in a row..."

"She's very tricky and clever, I should know," Ava countered.

"Stop it, all of you," Liz said, raising her voice just slightly over the usual low tones. "I tell you, I didn't sense that kind of - of selfish intentions in her..."

"Because she didn't even know that the ring was back here on Earth," Tess suggested. "Which it wasn't, I guess, but you know what I mean. Whatever her intentions were with respect to the five of you, things will change once she learns that we're back."

"That's true," Max said slowly. "On the other hand - I can't dispute the basic merit of Liz's idea."

"Big surprise," Michael scoffed under his breath.

Max narrowed his eyes, and Michael jumped slightly in his chair, his eyes bugging out for a second. Liz jumped a bit herself - it was hard for her to grasp the notion that Max had just used his powers as a minor discipline of Michael... but he couldn't really have chewed his friend out verbally or struck him physically in the situation, and this was a situation where Max **did** need to maintain discipline. "I **would** have discarded the notion, no matter who presented it to me, if I didn't believe in it," Max said, his voice harder than steel. "You all know how much I love Liz, but that doesn't mean my judgement as a leader goes out the window when she's involved. If Lonnie is anywhere nearby, and there's the slightest chance that she'll help us with this fight, we need to get her on board. That's the simple truth."

There was a long silence, and then Ava spoke up. "All right, chief. Well, if there's anybody here at the table that could comb campus and find 'Serena', then I'm your girl. I've got the sensitivity, and the familiarity with her mind. In fact, I'm a little surprised that she's been around and I didn't figure it out already, but that doesn't mean I'm not up for the job now that I know."

"Good, I'm glad to hear that, Ava," Max said. "Need any help?"

Ava considered that. "Liz I guess, since she's met Lonnie, and we've got an okay resonance for that kind of work."

"I'm not sure I want the two of you bracing my worser half alone together," Isabel pointed out. "She's still got a lot of nasty tricks up her sleeve."

"Yeah," Ava agreed, and considered. "Any chance you're free for this yourself, Max?"

Max blinked, looked over at Liz, and nodded. "You know, I think that I can clear my schedule."

"Alright," Michael said. "What's up for the rest of us?"

"Resident students will need to make preparations for being away for a few days," Tess rhymed off. "It shouldn't take any longer to settle this. We'll take anybody who wants up to the ship to show them around, and everybody goes upstairs tonight after the twilight fades. Right, Max?"

"Yes, thank you Tess," Max said with a little courtesy nod. "We might even be able to fit in some target practice and plans for the engagement." He took a deep breath. "We'll need to land the ship, but that's a bit risky. We don't want it to be observed, either by people or remote sensors like radar. That's why we're waiting until dark, and we're not going to come down here in Las Cruces. The Beast is close enough that we should be able to fly back sticking low to the ground, if we need to."

"Oh, yeah, I should have asked," Liz said. "Where is this big battle going to go down, anyway?"

"Carlsbad caverns," Michael filled in. "Can you think of a better place to hide an alien beast?"

Liz thought of those deep caves, and the possibility of running into something truly ferocious down in the darkness, and couldn't help but shudder.

"What kind of a beast?" Max looked up towards the not-quite-familiar voice, and cringed as he saw the waitress with a few people's orders. "Oh, sorry, none of my business I guess. Who had the boneless pork with rice and side salad?"

"Down here," Ava said, waving helpfully.

#

"Is - is it okay if we talk amongst ourselves?" Max asked Ava as the two of them, and Liz, walked back towards campus from the restaurant. (The rest of the group had broken up into other twos and threes.) "It won't disrupt your concentration or anything?"

"I'll tell you if I need some quiet, Max," Ava said in a whisper, so Max sort of shrugged and took Liz's hand. He didn't say anything, and Liz realized that he was going to give her the first crack.

"So, umm - what's the royal situation, at the moment?" Liz asked. "You mentioned a Vorjal, in the story of discovering this monster, and I remember that name. He was the oldest surviving son of the younger princes and princesses who survived Kivar's coup, Larek told us. The heir apparent to the Liaret crown, if we ignore you and Isabel."

"Good memory," Max admitted, pursing his lips as if to whistle, though he didn't make the sound. "It's a bit complicated - I'm a figurehead back there, or am when I'm there, but Vorjal has more real power than I do, and the civil service that we've set up probably has more than both of us put together. I'm a King for life, in name - but, but my children will not inherit the throne." He took a deep breath, tapped the pocket of his pants, and made a face. "And though I'm not ready to make it official yet, apparently, I will say for the record that as far as I'm concerned, for my royal bride and the mother of my children - it's you or nothing, Liz. Just so you know."

"Whoa." Liz shook her head, trying to increase the blood flow to her brain. "What - what does that mean, Max? Would I have to leave Earth, and go back with you this time? I... I can't say that I'm not tempted, now that the war is over, but..."

"Ssh." Max put his finger over her lips. "That can wait for another time."

"Like when?" Liz insisted assertively. "We should talk about this stuff before you do ask me officially, Max. That's important."

"Okay, but... we'll make time when we're not hunting down a possibly dangerous... woman. Right?"

Liz thought about that for a second, and then had to laugh. "Alright, fine. Sorry, I guess I got you started on the whole deal, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but that's alright." Max took a deep breath. "How are your parents? Have you heard from my parents?"

"Fine, and - yes, they're doing reasonably well. I actually had lunch with them and Isabel when I went up to Roswell for Christmas break." Max nodded in response to that. "A little bit awkward - they're still, I dunno, maybe you should talk to Isabel about how they're dealing with your disappearance, she'd have more information. I - I don't suppose you're likely to let them know you're back in the state, particularly?"

"Well... I hadn't planned on it, no," Max admitted softly. "Not when I don't think I'll be able to stay for too long."

"Right," Liz said, and tried to think of something else to talk about. "So, umm, this might be a weird thing to bring up, but how has Tess adapted to Antar - socially speaking? I mean, Michael and Maria are married and that's all great, except the Danyel stuff is bittersweet, and - and you've come back for me and I'm excited about the possibilities there..." She sighed. "If Tess was hoping that she'd have another chance with Kyle, then I don't think she'll have any luck. Kyle and Ava have their ups and downs, but overall I'd say that they're pretty tight."

Max chuckled heartily. "Tess - is famous and exotic, in the eyes of nearly everyone on Antar. All four of us are, but she's the only one who's been - taking advantage of that, in a social sense. If they kept a list of the top ten most eligible bachelorettes on the planet, she'd probably make the list, and she's been loving every minute of it. Personally, I sort of feel like she should stop playing the crowds and settle down with one guy that she really likes - but maybe you can't force that kind of thing. When she finds the one - I hope she recognizes him."

"Yeah, I think she will," Liz admitted. "And it's nice that she's having fun back there. So her current sourness is perhaps a reflection of the fact that your mission is keeping her away from her jam-packed social life?"

"That's probably part of it," Ava muttered. "And the fact that she's never really liked having to work closely with me." Liz nodded, and reflected that she hadn't even clued in that she was talking about Kyle and Ava's relationship in front of Ava at the time she'd spoken. All of her attention had been focused on Max, and Ava had been quiet and easy to ignore at that moment.

There was a sort of an awkward silence for a little while, and Ava led them down the main path through the campus, and then took a turn towards the liberal arts library and the Wyndham building, where a lot of literature-type professors kept their office and taught small classes that didn't have enough people to fit into the proper lecture halls. "You think that she's down this way?" Max asked. Liz couldn't really see Lonnie - err, Serena as an English studies type, but then she wasn't quite sure what major she would pick for the New York Girl, even with the whole course catalog to pick from. Her old specialties didn't really fit into the world of academia.

"Not sure yet," Ava admitted. "Just chasing down a feeling, and picking up some impressions. There seem to be plenty down this way, but I'm not sure yet." She sighed. "If you two aren't talking anymore, I've got a question, Max. What's the situation regarding Isabel and the rap that she's inherited from Vilandra?"

"Oh, umm - partially sorted out, but it's hard to argue people out of a rumour," Max said distractedly. "The real story, as close as we've been able to work it out, was that Vilandra wasn't really responsible for her actions."

"Manipulated by Kivar's mental abilities?" Liz said, and Max nodded. "That's going to be a bit hard for Isabel to hear confirmed - the idea that Vilandra was violated like that, a traumatic experience..." She sighed. "Are you going to ask her to come back with you too?"

"Liz!" Max's exclamation was almost pleading, but not quite. "Sorry, I just -"

"Okay, okay," Liz agreed, thinking that she should have known better. "No talking about anybody going back to Antar right now."

"Sounds fine by me," Ava muttered. "Oh, except for this - if Tess is getting along so great there, then I'm staying put here. We do very well with a number of light-years between us I think."

Max shook his head and one laugh got past his lips. "You know, Ava, as much as I've missed you, I think that can probably be arranged."

"Good. Quiet now. We're coming up on a crowd." Liz looked around, and realized that Ava was about to lead them into the atrium of the Wyndham building, which was indeed packed with students and a few teacher's assistants. It was change of classes, she realized after a look at her watch.

#

"I - I know it's not what any of us wanted to find out, but face the facts, Liz!" Ava said, her voice not loud but intense, as the three of them sat at a table in the Student Union more than an hour later. "We've been around the whole campus twice, and I haven't gotten a clear reading. In my expert opinion, that means one of two things. One, she's just plain not on the college grounds, or two, she's actively shielding the touch of her mind from me."

"Okay, okay," Liz said, groaning, and taking a long swallow of a chocolate milkshake that Max had ordered to try and cheer her up. "Given those choices, I say it's more plausible that she's left for some reason. Maybe she did it on purpose, not wanting anyone else to bump into her, or me again, before we'd had time to get used to the idea of her. But hiding herself here would be very close to an act of war - operating covertly under our noses. I really don't believe that's anything like what her intentions were."

"Okay, so she's left," Ava said. "Where does that leave her? We can't comb the entire city looking for her, and there's no way to tell if she's even in the Las Cruces limits. She might have taken off - well, anywhere, if she wanted to be out of the way."

"All we have to work with, is your meeting with her this morning, Liz," Max said softly. "Do you mind if I ask you a question that might seem a bit unusual at this point?"

Liz shrugged. "Why not? 'Unusual' isn't something that I really have a baseline for right now."

Ava snickered, and even Max smiled warmly at the line. "Just what abilities have you developed so far - in a sensing category? I know that you mentioned getting an empathic read on Serena..."

Liz hesitated, but Ava volunteered her own opinion. "'Sensitive' might be Liz's specialty, actually. Between receiving things that she can hardly help, and specific perceptual powers that she's learned to use as 'active scans', as it were - well, we'd be here a little while if we tried to give you the definitive list. Care to narrow down what you're thinking of?"

"Detecting signals from electronic devices?"

"Sure," Liz put in. "I check routinely to see if any of our rooms have suddenly gotten listening devices, or if friends in my classes are carrying anything more unusual than cell phones and PDAs."

"What about telling somebody's cell phone number from the signals it broadcasts to the tower?"

"Hmm... I suppose I could, if I tried - but then, I haven't really had any reasons to find out someone's cell phone number stealthily. Usually asking works, if I want to call up a friend - and there hasn't been anybody who's been tempting me to play secret admirer slash stalker."

"That's reassuring for me," Max said.

"Wait a second," Ava said. "I... I think I get a notion of what you're driving at, Max, and I don't like it. If we had Lonnie - sorry, 'Serena's cell phone number, Liz could call her and say that she wants to meet, but for that to work, Lonnie would have to be here now so Liz could scan her. I mean, I hope you're not meaning to imply..."

"I think that Liz picks up a _lot_ more than she consciously realizes," Max said softly, reaching out to hold both of her hands in his. "I'm hoping that it even includes something that she'd never tried to get on purpose."

"Wait, what?" Liz tried to pull away, but not hard, and Max kept his grip on her. "You - do you really think that I already know Serena's phone number; that I picked it up subliminally when I was talking with her this morning? I - I don't even know if she _had_ a cell phone on her."

"Not directly," Max said, and turned to face Ava. "Do you know the deep-connection hypnosis technique that I'm thinking of? I've had a little bit of practice, but I might not be the best person to try it on Liz."

"No, you're not digging into her mind for this, Max," Ava told him sharply. And then sighed. "Because I'm the girl for the job, as much as I don't really like it. Langley gave us translated instructions for Antarian power techniques - I guess I may not have mentioned that, huh? This was one of the ones that I was supposed to specialize in." She peeled Max's fingers away from one of Liz's hands to take it herself. "Liz, are you up for this? We can go back to our room and get it done, in five or ten minutes. I'm not sure if it's going to work, but Max is right enough that it's worth a try."

"What - what exactly is it?" Liz said. "Some kind of memory access technique?"

"Yeah, pretty much. I'll put you to sleep and make contact with your mind, suggesting that you replay the meeting with Serena. Like with conventional hypnosis done by a master practitioner, I'll be able to perceive that meeting in greater detail than you can remember yourself. Except, umm, with conventional hypnosis the hypnotist doesn't perceive it directly. But..."

"Okay, okay," Liz said. "Well, let me finish my shake first, and then - Max, you wanna see our room?"

"Of course," he admitted.

#

Liz shook herself, opened her eyes, and just managed to avoid saying, "Did something go wrong, why didn't you do it?" Even though she didn't really remember revisiting her encounter with Lonnie/Serena, she had obviously been passed out on her bed, and it seemed reasonably possible that everything else had gone according to plan. "What's the word?" she finally managed to get out without croaking too obviously.

"Well, we got a number," Ava said, passing her a little sticky note with ten digits and two dashes marked down on it. "You ready to try it? Time is short, but not in such short supply that you can't take a minute to wake up properly."

"Toss me a cherry soda," Liz suggested, and Ava moved to Liz's wardrobe and retrieved one of the little chubby bottles filled with the bright red beverage immediately. Max shot Liz a look, but she didn't really care. It would be hard for him to appreciate how close the two of them had grown in small ways since he'd been gone. After a few swigs of the cherry, Liz felt ready, and picked up the institutional phone receiver from her bedside table to start dialling it.

"Yeah, you got Serena. What?"

Liz tried not to laugh out loud. "Hey, it's Liz. Hope you don't mind that I found out your number."

"Um - no, s'alright. What are you calling about?"

"Well, something's come up, and we need help, an 'every able pair of hands' deal. Since we bumped into each other this morning, I immediately thought of you - you more than know how to handle yourself in a scrap, obviously, and this affects your own safety, too. Can we meet to talk about it?"

"Let's see..." Serena was silent for a moment. "Okay, sure. I'm on the other side of town, but - I can be back to the student union by four. How's that?"

Liz checked the clock - that was still more than an hour away, but whatever. "Okay. And, as a full disclosure - my boyfriend, and some other friends, are back in town."

"Ohh." Max was raising an eyebrow at the fact that she'd given away the surprise, and Ava was shaking her head a bit, but Liz felt confident that she'd done the right thing. "Is he the one who told you about this great danger?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, he was."

"Then - no offense, hun, but I'd rather not deal with you if you're the messenger girl. Tell Max to meet me next to the roast chicken joint in the student center, along with anyone else he likes who's got firsthand info. Alright?"

Liz considered this, and nodded to herself. "Yeah, okay, I'll tell him. Anything else?"

"No, that's all right little Parker. See you soon enough, I wouldn't be surprised."

"Okay, bye." Liz hung up. "Max, you're meeting Lonnie at the Student Center, four o'clock. Take Michael or Tess with you, maybe both but if so you should leave us one of the transporter orbs just in case."

"What?" he exclaimed.

"Sorry, but Serena only wants to talk to people with direct info about the Beast. She'll expect that to be the people who haven't been around lately."

"Why did you have to tell her about Max at all?" Ava asked.

"Because if we want Serena on our side, showing her a bit of trust and honesty is a good first step," Max pointed out. "She'd find out about us soon enough, and this way she can't claim that we were hiding it from her at all."

"Alright, so where now?" Ava asked.

"Pack up anything you think you might need, and Max beams us all upstairs," Liz suggested.

"Except that... we just missed an orbital period ten minutes ago," Max said, looking at the chrono on his wrist, which did _not_ look much like an Earth watch close up. "By the time the next one comes, my arranged meeting with Serena will have already started."

"Uh-oh, sorry, I didn't think of that," Liz said, shaking her head and getting dark hair in her face. To channel her frustration, she grabbed a little stretchable hair band from her dresser and started to gather up a ponytail. "Does that mean that Michael and Tess won't be available? Did they both beam up?"

"I'm not sure," Max admitted, and produced another little gizmo from one of his pockets. It looked a bit like an abstract-art version of a flip cell phone, actually, but he didn't dial it as he used it. "Max to Michael, Max to Tess, come in please?"

There was a moment's pause. "Tess here, what's up your majesty?"

"Just wondered if either of you were downstairs. Liz tells me I might need somebody who hasn't been around recently as backup for my meeting with Serena."

"Okay, yeah, I'm over at the sports complex with Kyle. Where do I need to be and when?"

Liz expected Max to say the student center at four o'clock, but he surprised her when he made his final decision. "Liz and Ava's room, twenty minutes to four. We'll go over a bit of strategy and walk over to the Student center together."

"Alright, boss," Tess chirped. Liz could hear Kyle chuckling over the line faintly.

"Hey, what's up?" Michael's voice sounded a bit crackly compared to Tess'.

"Umm, just checking in, you up in Czechoslovakia?" Max confirmed.

"Yes, indeed, along with Maria, Isabel, and Alex. What's up?"

"Mostly just checking in, but - well, Tess and I are going to go meet with Serena at four o'clock."

"Need any more backup? I don't think we reach position until nearly four thirty, but..."

"No, that's fine, we'll be okay, but I think that Kyle, Ava, and Liz will want lifts up when the time comes. Think that you can handle all of that?"

"Hmm." Michael considered. "Yeah. Where they gonna be?"

"Liz and Ava's room in residence, I guess... actually, I didn't confirm that Tess would bring Kyle along, but... it won't be a problem that they're all together?"

"No, Maria and I can handle it," Michael said. "We got the co-ordinates with Ava's help this morning. You just concentrate on Serena."

"That's the plan," Max said, and flipped his communicator closed.

"So, what do we do from now until three-thirty?" Ava asked with a big grin. Max groaned slightly, but Liz smiled too, because she knew her roommate well enough to tell that Ava was joking.

"Make yourself scarce, New York girl," Liz shot back. "Max and I - have a talk that we need to get through." Max blinked slightly, then nodded.

"Okay, have fun... talking," Ava said, and popped quickly out the door. Liz turned to Max, putting the question to him without words.

"No, I - I wasn't thinking of having this conversation now, but - well, I was hoping to kiss, and I entirely understand if you don't want to be making out while this stuff is still unresolved." He sighed. "I still don't have your pendant."

"If you recall, I said that we needed to get our understanding straight before we made it official," Liz reminded him, arranging herself so that she was sitting just off the middle of the bed, and inviting Max with a gesture to take a seat next to her. "First question, do you want to get married on Antar?"

"Well, yes," he admitted. "In fact, as overwhelming as it would certainly seem to anyone who hasn't gotten used to the idea, I have my heart set on a full Royal State wedding - in the castle Basilica, with a huge crowd of Antarian well-wishers." He considered for a moment. "Though I suppose there isn't any reason we can't have a ceremony on Earth as well, for our parents here, and so on."

"What kind of religion do the Antarians have?" Liz suddenly asked. "I mean, I assume you've had some exposure to it by now."

"Umm, not really - it's kind of complicated, and not at all unified or consistent among the peoples of the planet - what made you ask about that?"

"Well, you mentioned getting married in a Basilica."

"Oh - maybe it's not quite the right word," Max said, shaking his head. "It's not solely a church, though there are religious groups that use the building. It _looks_ like a cathedral or a basilica, but primarily it was built for ceremonies that are... more secular."

"For the royal pageantry, you mean, instead of the strictly religious?" Liz interpreted, and Max nodded. "Okay, well, we can put the religion question to one side. Umm... about timing, then. When would you want - actually, I guess there's probably a time that you _need_ to go back to Antar, isn't there? With or without me, if it should come to that, though neither of us necessarily wants it to be without me."

"Yes, umm..." Max considered. "There's some uncertainty, and I think the absolute latest we can leave would be three and a half weeks."

"Right," Liz said. "A fair amount of time to get ready, even come up with some cover for my family and explanations for my classmates and teachers - but not enough time to really arrange a wedding here - unless we went to Vegas, which kind of defeats the point." Max nodded. "And the big question - when I go with you... how long before I can come back?"

"Hopefully less than a year," Max said. "There's a new interstellar portal, and I want to bring one to Earth and install it - probably in Roswell, though we might consider Las Cruces fairly when the time comes. That'll make it much easier to get back and forth without having to have a ship and warp all the way over."

"How long did it take to warp here in Czechoslovakia?" Liz asked.

"There's a time distortion effect - it was nine days for us, but I think that the elapsed time was more like fourteen."

"Okay." Liz pondered if she had any more questions that seemed critical just at that moment. "Well, that's a lot to take in, but I guess it's enough. I... I do want to be with you, and so I'm leaning towards going along with the whole plan, even though I have a few concerns about leaving so soon and being away from Earth for so long. Don't - don't give me your pendant or whatever just yet, though, okay? I think this is one that I'm going to need to think on."

"Alright," Max said softly. "You're not going to ask me about Isabel as well?"

"Didn't really seem that important..." She looked over, and saw a not-quite-expected spark in Max's eyes. "You really want to tell me, huh?"

"Well, sort of." Max squeezed her hand with his. "This is up to Isabel and Alex whether they go along with the idea or not, of course... but I really want it to be a double Royal wedding."

Liz blinked. "Me and you, Isabel and Alex - getting married at the same time?"

"Umm - yeah. Oh, you don't have a problem with that, do you? Sharing your special day, I mean - I know Isabel isn't always good about sharing, and she might get a little, umm, intense about her wedding..."

"No, actually, I think it's a lovely idea," Liz admitted. "Not sure how much of my neck I'll risk to help you convince your sister, but if you get her to agree, I'm great with it."

"Oh, good," Max said, though he seemed a little dazed by the way she had phrased that, and just starting to get nervous.

"Now come on, if we've finished talking..." Liz pulled Max's lips toward hers, and he got the idea in a split second. She contrived to stretch Max out on the bed, and then straddled herself on top of him, not breaking liplock the whole time


	3. Chapter 3

The loud knocking on the door interrupted Max in the middle of a leisurely caress around Liz's left hip. "Yeah, Ava, I know that they'll be here soon," he called out.

"It's not Ava," a familiar voice called back through the door, "and we're here now. Get yourself decent, your majesty!"

Liz sat up somewhat and shot a 'well, so much for **our** fun' look at Max, He nodded, backed up somewhat, and retrieved his shirt and started slipping it on. It took a bit more time and more steps for Liz to dress and tidy herself, (which might tell you something about their choice of romantic activities,) and Max waited tenderly until she was completely finished before he let Tess in, even after she started pounding in a steady rhythm.

"Hi, Kyle," Max said as Tess, Ava, and their respective foster brother/boyfriend filed in. "Michael and Maria will be orienting on this room to bring you 'upstairs' when the ship is next in position - that is, if you want to see the spaceship, Kyle."

"Well, of course I want to see the ship," Kyle muttered. "And even if you haven't asked, I'm up for the scrap. I don't have as many powers developed as Liz does, but one of them is a decent energy blast."

"I didn't doubt you'd want in," Ava told him softly. "That's the only reason that **I** didn't ask."

"And I wasn't sure, but I'm glad to hear it," Max said. "Okay, um, Tess - maybe we should take the scenic route to the student center, so we can talk amongst ourselves..."

"Hey, wait a second," Ava put in. "Why are we getting shut out? Serena will only meet with you or the others who took the big trip - but I know Lonnie best of all. Just because she's taken a new name, I don't think that she's changed _that_ much. Whatever plans you're making, I should be in on it, as much as possible."

Max looked around the room. "Okay. I just thought you guys wouldn't want to be bothered for the whole briefing."

"I guess I don't mind," Liz said. "This whole thing started because of me, more or less."

But it was hard for her to concentrate on the discussion about exactly how to handle a problem like Serena, and as hard as Liz tried to at least keep up a facade of paying attention, she inevitably drifted off into other thoughts - especially her reactions to what Max had told her of his plans. It was hard to grasp the notion of leaving Earth with him, for at least a year, and getting married to King Max in a huge royal wedding - but deep down, Liz knew that she would do exactly that. Even if she didn't quite grasp what she was doing when she stepped onto the starship with him just before takeoff, (or would they be beaming up, with the vessel already in orbit, when it actually happened?) After all that she'd been through with Max, she was simply _not_ going to stay behind when he left a second time. She couldn't possibly.

There were so many more things she had to ask him about what his life on Antar was like, Liz realized. As a figurehead king, was his daily routine one of hollow-feeling ritual, as the lives of kings so often seemed to be in the historical novels she sometimes read? Or did he have time and opportunity to pursue his own interests? What kind of a place did he live - probably royal apartments like the ones that Maria had shown in her pictures?

What would Isabel think of when she heard about the double wedding idea? Probably tell Max off for jumping the gun on her and Alex's engagement - Liz knew that sort of proper order to things was very important to Isabel. Nobody was supposed to make definitive suppositions about a wedding until the guy popped the question - unless the girl took her option to do it herself. And even if Max was worried about it, Liz had no fear of Isabel ruining her wedding day with her own demands. Isabel might be very assertive in an obvious way, but Liz knew a few ways of handling the other girl - and she would be the Queen-to-be. A princess didn't outrank...

"Hey, Liz?" She realized that Max had mentioned her name at least once before. "Are you with us?"

"Umm, I guess so, now. What's the topic?"

"Tess was wondering exactly what Serena told you this morning?"

"Hmm?" Liz turned to Ava. "You power-hypnotized me, girl. Can't you repeat the dialog perfectly, better than I could remember it myself?"

"If I'd been **concentrating** on that, then yeah, I could," Ava pointed out. "I was concentrating on less conventional senses, trying to pick up a cell phone number that you hadn't even been aware of, remember?"

"Oh, okay, well - let's see." Liz thought idly of suggesting that she go through the advanced recall procedure a second time, but that would probably take more time that racking her brains herself, and it wasn't really anything that she did want to go to the trouble of. So, Liz repeated the entire exchange as well as she could, from Serena telling her friends that 'We're going to need a long moment here' to Liz's own last line spoken to Serena in the dining hall, her arrogant 'I'm done with you now,' and everything that she could remember in between.

"Nice note there, Parker," Tess admitted appreciatively, when Liz finished the replay on that note. "Showing strength and authority in just such a way that she had no choice but to sit there and take it. We could do worse than finding a way to open up talks on the same theme, Max."

"Maybe," Max said, his face several kinds of pensive. "It's the 'she has to take it' part that I'm worried about. That's not easy to arrange with a girl like our Serena. I'd almost rather start off on an even footing; give her that much dignity, until we can figure out exactly what she wants to hold it over her."

"Well, you've got a ride home," Ava pointed out. "That might be a bargaining chip - has been in the past, though she didn't express that much interest in it last time I met her."

"Maybe she didn't think that we were anywhere close to getting the Granilith working, then," Tess pointed out.

"In any event, it's about time that we should be on our way," Max said. "Thanks for your input, guys - and enjoy the trip up."

"Yeah, in more than half an hour," Liz said, as Max and Tess departed. "Love you, honey." That just sort of needed to be said.

"Okay, so what do we do now?" Kyle asked.

"I could always tell Liz to go outside and read something for twenty-five minutes," Ava pointed out mischievously. Liz immediately reached out and laid her hand blindly on a nearby book. "No, as tempting as it is to give you a little taste of 'Liz Parker medicine,' I don't think we're that cruel, are we Kyle?"

"Well, I'm not the one who has payback coming to me," Kyle pointed out. "You're the one who was banished."

"Yeah, but - well, Max and Liz do have some extenuating circumstances," Ava admitted a bit sadly. "We have our standing date here, no need to add to it just because there's nothing else obvious to do while we wait."

"Well, then, maybe Liz can let slip a bit of the dirt," Kyle said, turning to her. "Like what plans she and Maxxie-boy have made for after the monster has been vanquished."

"Hmm." Liz almost pleaded secrecy by instinct, and then realized that she actually did want to share some of those details with her close friends. "Let's see - he's talked about proposing, but never seems to have the right bit of bling available to hand..."

"A pendant, right?" Ava guessed? "I remember someone mentioning that as the Antarian tradition, and Max would want to do it old-school. Did you notice that Michael and Maria were wearing neck chains? They really didn't go with Michael's outfit, and I couldn't see what was hanging from the chains because he tucked them down inside his shirt."

"Yeah, I think he did mention that one time," Liz admitted. Ring, pendant, or bracelet, it hardly mattered to her what sort of token of his love Max chose for her - at least, not in abstract. When she was actually looking at it, she would probably have some opinion.

"So, if it's an Antarian pledge pendant, does that mean a wedding on Antar?" Kyle asked in his own turn.

"Yeah, looks like," Liz admitted. "He has to head back within three weeks, and thinks it'll be nearly a year before I can come back home."

"We need a hyperspace expressway running out here into the boonies," Ava pointed out. "I don't mind you going off to the mother-world to make things official, and to be with Max while he takes care of Kingly stuff, but - I need to see you more often than that, girl!"

"How about an instant transit portal to Antar, somewhere here in New Mexico?" Liz asked, giggling. "Apparently, they're not ready to set that one up yet, but it's an appealing prospect somehow, huh?"

"Hmm... as long as nobody from the FBI discovers it," Kyle put in. "And no other aliens that we don't know about hitch a ride to Earth."

"Hey, I don't think we need a complete moratorium on new visitors," Ava insisted. "They just all need to know how to behave over here."

"Yeah, yeah, we can worry about setting up the immigration control board later, right guys?" Liz said. "One more little tidbit that Max let slip, and you can't let this one go further yet?"

"Umm, sure, okay," Ava said. Liz shot a look at Kyle. "Valenti'll have me to deal with if he spills."

"Okay." Liz took a little breath. "Max wants Isabel and Alex to come home too. Double royal wedding."

"Oh, okay," Ava said. "Are you okay with that, sweetie? I mean..."

"Yeah, why does everybody think that I'd mind sharing my bridal experience with Isabel Evans? Max asked too. She's not that bad."

"You weren't around for Christmas this year," Ava pointed out.

"No, I guess not, but I have been around her at Christmas," Liz shot back. "I have no fear."

There was a short pause. "So, no more Antarian gossip?" Kyle asked.

"Umm, let's see - there's Michael and Maria's wedding, but I'll let her show you guys the video," Liz admitted. "Nothing else that I think you guys haven't already heard about."

"Okay," Ava checked her watch. "So we need some way to spend another twenty minutes or so."

Kyle exchanged a look, and then reached up to the shelf above her bed. Even though he couldn't see where his hand was going, he found the pack of cards instantly. "Whatcha think - five hundred euchre this time, or knock rummy?"

"Why not Tizycha Odin?" Ava countered.

Liz sighed. "If we **have** to play cards, I'll vote for five hundred." She started pulling out the little table and arranging chairs around it.

#

When Michael and Maria appeared in the blink of an eye, they were surrounding the table, and Michael immediately grunted in pain and gritted his teeth in the manliest way that Liz could think of. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"Something's overlapping him," Maria said.

"Yeah," Michael agreed gruffly. "Damn chair. We didn't think that you'd all be in the damn middle of the..."

"Serves us right for not re-scanning," Maria pointed out. "Umm, Ava, quick, activate his orb..."

"How?" Ava asked, quickly jumping to his feet. Kyle was nervously staying still, because it was his chair that Michael was behind, and thus presumably the one that he had gotten too close too.

"Umm... you just kind of..." Maria broke off, realizing that it would be quicker to take action herself than start explaining. Running around the table, she dropped her own little teleport orb on the corner as she went over to Michael, and took his orb in her hands as well, closing her eyes. Liz caught a small glow from the metal, and then both of them were gone again, leaving behind only the one alien orb.

"Okay, now what?" Kyle asked.

"It's safe to get up now," Ava said to him. "And I want to look at that chair, just out of curiosity."

"What - are you wondering if it's got a chunk taken out of it?" Liz asked, shuddering slightly. That would suggest that bringing Michael back up to the ship hadn't entirely solved the overlap problem, though it would have freed him from attachment to the rest of the chair and possibly brought him to the other alien crew, who even Liz hadn't yet met. Would any of them possess a healing gift, perhaps?

When they checked the chair, there was nothing obviously missing, but a small patch of the leg seemed to be discoloured and weak. "The teleporter tried to lock into only Michael's molecules, but it couldn't do that perfectly," Ava guessed. "Left behind some blood and other bits of tissue, and took a bit of the grain of the wood, which would account for the way it feels bendy."

"Well, let's clear this all away from the middle of the room, just in case," Liz said, taking the table and pushing it back into the space between her dresser and Ava's desk, with the cards and score sheet still strewn over its top. "And stay back ourselves, probably sitting on the beds."

"And just wait?" Kyle asked. But it really wasn't that long after everything had been organized properly that Maria reappeared.

"How's Michael?" Liz asked immediately.

"Not great, but he'll be okay," Maria said. "Who's got my orb?" Liz rushed forward to retrieve it from the table, but when Maria saw where she was going she reached it first, and tossed the orb that she had been carrying, (Michael's,) over to Ava "Okay, activating these is very easy, just using your powers to connect with it and sending a sort of 'go' message."

"Okay, I'll give it a try," Ava said. "I'll go with Kyle, you with Liz?"

"Umm - no, I'll take them both up," Maria said. Liz was starting to feel like she should have got a chance to try teleporting herself, but kept herself from speaking up. "If you have any problems, just wait, and I'll come back down and get you."

"We've got enough time for that?" Ava checked.

"Only just, so count thirty seconds before we go and then give it a try." Liz and Kyle had already gathered near to Maria.

"After you go," Ava countered.

"What?"

"I can't count thirty seconds before you go, unless you wait to go until I've finished..." Ava lectured, but her voice was cut off as the three of them blinked up into the mirror chamber.

#

As it turned out, it was just over forty seconds after they cleared out of the mirror chamber when Liz heard a faint kind of a popping sound, and when Maria pulled the wall open again, Ava was there, holding Michael's orb up to the mirrored ceiling in a gesture of unmitigated triumph.

"Okay, so we're finally all up in the starship," Kyle said, clenching Ava's free hand with his own and waving them both high as she stepped out into the corridor. "What do we do next?"

"Umm, don't look at me," Liz said, because Ava had. "I didn't really see much - just Max's room - and Maria's. I've mentioned that you need to see Maria's wedding video, but I think I'd rather you didn't do that until Max gets back..."

"Well, I'm going to the infirmary to check on my husband," Maria declared. "It'd be nice if you all came along to wish him well, at least, since in a way he injured himself on your behalves. And after that... well, I'm going to want to spend more time with him, if Eleeron says it's okay. You guys can - I don't know, go find Isabel and Alex and find out what they're up to now. Just don't touch anything that looks important."

"Doesn't it just figure," Kyle muttered. "Four of the gang who came over here on this ship, and they're all too busy to give us the proper tour guide routine."

"Don't make a big deal, sweetie," Ava told him in a similarly low voice. "We'll do okay at making our own fun."

The infirmary was really too small for them to all crowd into at once - space being at a premium in most of 'Czechoslovakia', which was either a small ship, or had most of its volume taken up with equipment and unavailable for people. Liz actually wondered how cramped the trip home would feel, if she and Isabel and Alex would be coming too. Or would somebody who'd come over be staying on Earth? Not Max, obviously, or Tess if her social life back on Antar was so much fun, and presumably not Michael and Maria, who would want to go back as soon as possible and be reunited with their son, Liz had to assume. And she wasn't sure if they could make the trip without the three 'crew'...

But anyway, they all took their turns popping into the little sick bay, saying hello to Michael and meeting Eleeron, one of the crew who apparently doubled as a medic. Like most of the Antarians Liz had seen in Maria's pictures and video, he seemed strange but relatable, like a man in makeup for some alien species that 'Star Trek' hadn't yet made up a name for - this particular makeover involving blue-silver skin and dark maroon hair as well as violet eyes and the requisite changes in facial bone structure.

Michael, for his own part, was chatty and sociable, obviously feeling no more pain, though apparently he'd have to stay entirely off the affected foot for a few more hours before the repairs to it were complete. Liz asked if he and Maria wanted any more company, but after a look the married pair assured him that they'd appreciate the alone time together, so she followed Eleeron out and rejoined Kyle and Ava.

"Okay, umm - so where do we find Isabel and Alex?" Ava asked after a moment.

"I believe that fairly recently Her Highness and Mister Whitman were in the Stern lounge, accessing historical and cultural material on the Antarian sector from the ship's computer," Eleeron said calmly. "I can escort you there, if you wish."

"Why thank you, that would be most kind," Liz answered, and after a bit of reorganizing their formation in the narrow corridor, Eleeron was leading them aft. They didn't have terribly far to go before the hallway ended at a door, which at a touch from Eleeron, opened into a fairly spacious little room, with comfortable chairs and a few small tables. Isabel and Alex were sitting side by side on a chair just wide enough for two, (kind of like it's a loveseat, Liz thought to herself,) and watching a semi-transparent video playing above one of the tables.

"Hi guys," Liz said, smiling as she saw them. "Learned much?"

"Oooh, quite a lot, but it seems like there's always more," Isabel complained back. "What about you guys? Any luck on the search for my worser half?"

"Yeah, Max and Tess should be talking with her right now," Kyle told her. "When she heard that those who had gone to Antar were back, nobody else would do to negotiate with her."

"Yeah, that sounds like Lonnie," Isabel agreed. "It seems to me like Serena isn't so different. So I guess Max and Tess probably won't be back until next orbit?"

"I guess so," Ava agreed. "And Michael hurt his foot by accident, going back down to Earth for us, so he's laid up in the infirmary, and Maria is holding his hand tight."

"He hurt his foot?" Alex said, looking up at Ava curiously. (The video had gotten paused at some point by now.) "Like stubbed his toe, or what? How do you..."

"Transporter accident," Kyle said, his voice somehow somber and full of relish at the same time. "He overlapped with my chair because nobody rescanned the room and realized that we'd started playing cards."

"Oooh," Isabel and Alex went at the same time. "Okay, make a note to _always_ get them to scan before beaming me down **anywhere**."

"I think that's already the plan, but sure," Liz agreed. "So, anyway, the upshot is that we five are left to our own fun for a little while. Any ideas?"

"Not more browsing through the general computer files, I'm afraid," Alex said, and turned off the video display. "And as much as I want to know what our friends have been up to, I don't think we should be looking through their personal files without them being here."

"Yeah, okay," Ava said. "Liz mentioned Maria's wedding video, but also that she didn't want to see it again yet."

"Right, okay," Alex said. "Umm, Liz, did Maria happen to mention..."

"Well, yeah," Liz said, wishing Alex hadn't brought this up.

Sure enough, Kyle latched onto the enigma-ness. "Mention what?"

Liz looked from Alex to Isabel to Kyle, and then shrugged. Maybe it would be kinder to save Maria and Michael from another round of explanations. "Maria and Michael have a son, who they had to leave back on Antar to come here."

"Oh, okay," Ava said. "Nice for them, a bit sad that they had to be separated from the little one - are there baby pictures in Maria's files?"

"Yeah, a few, but not like ordinary baby pictures," Isabel said, taking her turn. "Danyel is - he has to live in a pod, like the ones we were in, for the time being."

And the realization of what that must mean to Michael and Maria as parents came crashing down on Ava and Kyle at the same time. "Wow," Kyle breathed. "Well - I guess it's better for them than losing another child, but - that's gotta suck to a certain extent."

"Yeah," Liz agreed softly. "I could tell that just the memory of being close enough to touch her little boy except for the transparent whatever in the way - well, saying it was really tough on her is hardly putting it strongly enough."

There was a pause, and Alex took in a deep breath. "Okay, we really need something to distract ourselves. Maybe try some kind of a computer game?"

"Ehh, alright in theory, but I don't want to have to browse through the whole ship's library looking for something good," Ava decided.

"Well, there's a sort of an AI persona," Isabel said. "Maybe he'll help us sort through it all. C-3PO?"

"Max called him that, didn't he?" Kyle guessed, as a golden robot head that did look a little like the 'Star Wars' character appeared.

"If you are referring to my persona name, then yes, Max Evans suggested it," C-3PO told them. He was a holographic projection and slightly see-through, like the historical video had been, and was occupying the same space above the table. "How may I help you?"

"We'd like you to run a search of the games in the entertainment library, please," Isabel instructed. "Let's see - something interactive, suitable for five players, with a 'beginner' skill level - little or no violence. Does anybody else have criteria?"

The young people exchanged looks, and most of them shrugged. "Sort for highest approval rating, if that's available data," Alex suggested.

"Search ready. Begin run?"

"Run, and estimate time to completion," Isabel said.

"Running. Estimate fifty-nine seconds to retrieve highest ten matches."

"Good thing they taught the computer about seconds," Kyle decided.

The number one search was a three-dimensional maze game, with each player trying to explore and control as much of the maze as possible, and safely trap the others. There were a number of weird creatures in the maze as well, that could generally be 'tamed' by the first player to meet them, and then sent off to do various errands of mischief elsewhere in the maze, but most of them were quite likely to get lost along the way. Liz enjoyed herself quite a lot.

"Hey, guys," Maria said from the doorway, right after Alex won the third game - not the third that he had won, just the third game that they had played. Nobody had won more than one. "Just heard from Max and Tess - they'll be up when we loop orbit in five minutes."

"Oh, has it been that long already?" Ava said, turning to Maria with a smile. "And did they mention whether Serena will be joining them?"

"Not right now, apparently - she'll come 'upstairs' later tonight I think, just before we're ready to land near Carlsbad," Maria guessed. "Frankly, I'm not ready to deal with her yet myself."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Liz agreed. "Okay, so what's the plan for the early evening?"

"Oh, just a dinner," Maria said. "Call it Antarian fusion cuisine - shouldn't be anything too traumatic to Earth-accustomed taste buds."

"Alright by me," Kyle decided. "But do you have anywhere here on the ship big enough where all nine of us - or more - can sit down and eat at the same time?"

"Well, we'll have to be a bit creative there," Maria said. "Or, really, we **have** been creative."

#

In point of fact, though she'd never have pricked Maria's bubble by telling her so, Liz found the solution to the 'dining table' quite obvious and sensible. Two large rooms on the 'port' side of the ship's single deck had been designed with double doors connecting them, in addition to the usual doors allowing entry from the main corridor. Thus, a table big enough for six people could be set in the Royal Mess, and another in the forward entertainment lounge, and though it was a bit hard to see everybody else through the open doors, conversation could at least be carried on with a little bit of patience.

Before dinner, though, there was one more little surprise for Liz - or at least something that she hadn't expected to happen yet. She made a point of being at the 'mirror room' in time to hear Max and Tess' arrival, and to welcome Max with a big hug and kiss as soon as he came out. Max spent nearly five minutes close by her side, the two of them mingling with the rest of the group, including swapping some jokes with Isabel and Alex, and going into the infirmary to console Michael and ask if there was any chance he'd be able to sit up for dinner with the rest of the group.

Then Max excused himself to go to his cabin and freshen up for dinner. Liz and the others who didn't have a room of their own on 'Czechoslovakia' were asked if they needed to use any necessary facilities, and Liz declined, feeling that after all that had happened she was still feeling quite fresh and clean enough, and having used the bathroom in the middle of the card game while waiting for Maria and Michael, (though the timing might have been tricky if they'd come while she was away from the room, but Max had given her a heads up on the timing and she'd known she'd be okay for time then.)

Maria and Tess made a point of escorting Liz into the Royal Mess and into her seat, next to the head of the table, and she was wondering if something was up about the two of them both acting so solicitous when Max appeared again in the doorway. He had changed his entire outfit, not into the jumpsuit from this morning, but something that looked a bit more like a formal naval uniform or the sort of outfit she'd expect from a prince - or a young King.

And he was holding an intricately jewelled pendant from his right hand, making no secret of it now. Liz knew just what that meant by now. She thought about standing up, and then decided that it was probably better not to. Max had undoubtedly arranged all of this carefully, enlisting Maria and Tess' help to make sure that she was in position. (Had Michael had his own role to play, until he found himself out of the action, and the remaining conspirators been forced to scramble to recruit Tess to replace him? The thought made Liz chuckle.)

That display of good humour from her seemed to give Max confidence to move forward, and he knelt down onto one knee at the end of the table, where no setting or chair had been placed, (for this reason, Liz now realized,) and faced her at a diagonal. Liz turned her chair and herself to meet his gaze. "Okay, umm - we've talked about some of the issues and aspects of the situation, so none of this is a surprise to you, Liz," Max said, just a bit awkwardly. "Will you come back with me, to be my love and my wife? I love you with all of my heart, and I could feel you in my soul no matter how many light years separated us. Hasn't the time come for the two of us to never again be separated, no matter where our lives take us?"

That put Liz on the spot more than a little, and she looked around at all of her friends who had gathered around the room and crowded into the open doorways. Stalling for time as the words fought to assemble in her mind, she reached out to stroke the surface of the pendant, not taking it from him yet. "Max, you know that I would be happy and joyful to join my life to yours, as lifelong mates and spouses." Took in a sharp breath. "_Equal_ mates, though. That's the part that I'm worried about. Saying that we'll never be separated no matter where our lives take us sounds very good on the face of it, but..."

"But you're worried that my life will take me places far away from Earth and the other things that you love," Max breathed, "and it'll be hard to stand up for the things that you want and need in your life, in the face of 'royal responsibilities and obligations?"

Liz nodded, trying hard to keep from crying and to speak clearly. "Y-yeah. It seems almost unloving to be worried about such possibilities, when all you've offered me is your love, but..."

"No, you're just being smart about it," Max insisted. "Of course. This is the rest of our lives that we're deciding, here." Now he, also, looked around a little self-consciously. "But I will put you first above all of Antar, if there's ever a conflict. You - you stayed behind when I left, two and a half years ago, because you knew that I wouldn't be able to do that, and - and I decided when we left to come back that I would promise it to you this time. You deserve all of me, Liz, and that's what I'm offering."

"But how can you?" Liz asked. "If your people need you..."

"They needed a stranger to come riding into town, as it were, and shake things up - to rid the planet from an entrenched tyrant," Max pointed out. "If nothing else, I can abdicate all my royal rights and responsibilities in favour of Vorjal, to be with you. That would actually be a fitting end to the story we spun for the Antarian public."

Liz considered, and realized that it felt right. "Okay - there are more details that we need to discuss, but I think that we understand each other. Yes, I will go back to Antar and marry you, Max Evans, and we'll figure out our lives from there, and I accept this as a token of our royal... our royal Betrothal." Smiling, she took the pendant from him, and gradually pulled the chain away from between his fingers.

"Would you allow me to do the honours?" Max asked, standing back up and making an oddly formal bow. For a second, Liz didn't get the point, and then she rose from her chair, handing the pendant back to him and doing the traditional 'hair gathered up to one side and a little bit away from the neck' thing. Max stepped up behind her, lowering the chain over her head, manoeuvring one end underneath her hair, and fastening the little clasp.

"Okay, are we done with the ritual now?" Liz giggled, and looked down at the intricate little knot of gold, silver, and coloured sparkly stones. It looked very out of place resting against the front of her plain and comfy sweater.

"I can get you a more 'suitable' top for the occasion if you want, Liz," Tess called in, and the ripple of laughter that followed satisfied her that they were definitely not in a ritualistic mode now.

"Actually, I don't think I need your help with that, Tess," Liz said, and with a laugh she tucked the chain inside the sweater and then pulled the heavy garment off her completely. Underneath she was wearing a periwinkle-violet wife beater with a low enough neckline to show off the pendant as it nestled close to her heart. "That's the ticket, huh?"

"I'm certainly not complaining," Max said, taking the sweater out of her hand and putting it down in an empty part of the sideboard-like counter, before taking the seat next to Liz, in the middle of the far side of the table. "And now that that little detail has been settled, to everybody's satisfaction I'm hoping, how about dinner?"

"Yeah," Alex cheered on. "It's an engagement party for the two of you now!"

"A **Betrothal** party," Maria insisted.

"You know, I hate to step on the fun," Isabel put in as they started serving out food, "but I'm not sure that you should be using that term. It may not mean what you think it does."

"Oh?" Max said. "Well, enlighten us, dear sister. The four of us just sort of started using it because it seemed to match the sense of grandeur and pomp that the Antarians have for royal or noble engagements. I suspect that Maria mentioned something about that to Liz, and that's how she got bitten by the bug."

"We covered this in my social studies requirement," Isabel put in. "We had something about social customs around the world. Notable characteristics of a betrothal are, let's see... that it joins the participants as husband and wife, even before the formal wedding, that it is **usually** arranged and agreed by the families with no input from the direct participants, and a blessing by clergy at the time of the betrothal."

"Ooh, okay, that's not so appealing, and definitely not what we done did right now," Liz admitted, making a bit of a face. "Guess we're back to 'engagement.'"

"Nothing wrong with that," Ava called - from the other table. "Does somebody have any decent hot sauce to pass down here?"

"Oh, here it is, sorry," Tess replied. Ava didn't answer out loud, but there was a satisfied sort of a sigh after a little while.

"So, I'm all up for celebrating an engagement," Isabel said, "but isn't there more serious business?"

"Yeah, but I think it can wait until tomorrow," Max said. "By then we'll be landed in the neighbourhood of Carlsbad, and we can do drills and lessons out in the desert. That's better than using offensive powers near the ship's systems, or worrying about orbit and teleport schedules."

"But will we still have time for celebrations, after tomorrow?" Alex asked insistently. "Because I'm okay with tonight being all about you and Liz, but it occurs to me that we need to throw Mister and Miz Guerin a proper wedding reception."

"Yeah," Ava agreed. "One that he's out of the medical bay for."

Max rolled his eyes and shook his head a little. "Oooh, a party for us?" Maria exclaimed, bouncing in her chair and nearly clapping.

"Somehow I think that we'll fit it in," Tess said. "Some things are important."

"I couldn't agree more," Liz said, catching Maria's eye and winking.


	4. Chapter 4

"Excuse me, my darling, but it's time I go and take care of giving Serena a lift up," Max said, kissing the side of her cheek and then pushing his chair out from the table.

"Why should that be your job?" Liz didn't mean to sound whiny, but she wasn't ready to have her new fiancee taken from her side for anything. "Why can't, umm..."

"Well, I thought that I would do better than Maria, or Tess, in impressing her with the idea that she needed to keep well in line," Max explained. "Don't want to send two people just to collect her - might give her the impression that we're really afraid of her. So..."

Liz really **was** a bit afraid of Serena/Lonnie, and not just on her own behalf, but she knew that trying to tell Max that she was scared for him would probably not have the right result. Even if Max **was** afraid, if he thought that showing no fear was the right thing to do, he would act accordingly, every step of the way. "Alright, just... just be back soon, and come on over here Maria!"

"Hey, what?" Maria had wedged her chair partly into the space between the two dinner tables, and was listening to some story of a winter vacation up in the Aspen area that Isabel and Alex had been telling her. "Umm - why?"

"Well, if that story is fascinating enough that you don't have time for your oldest friend, then don't," Liz said, as Max got up and made his way around the back of the table, smiling, "but my fiancee is leaving me, and I sort of wanted to talk to a wife of the Antarian nobility about what to expect, since it seems like I'm set to become one myself."

"Noble?" Maria stood up with a slight nod to Isabel and Alex, and struck a dramatic pose. "Michael? Are you kidding me?"

"Come on, you know what I mean," Liz said as Maria headed over. "Isn't he a son of the house of Selezir, and favoured friend to the Crown, and all of that, over there?"

"Oh." Maria sat down in the chair that Max had vacated. "You're talking about the aristocratic **lifestyle**, as opposed to a noble temperament and demeanour?"

Liz giggled, wondering if there had been something mood-altering in the drink, or if she was just high on the love. "Yeah, I guess I mean that sort of thing. Aside from - well, from spending time with D when you can, and going to a few of those fancy parties that you showed me pictures of, what's your life like on Antar, and what do you think of Michael's?"

"Well, probably more like yours here than you'd have expected, in that a lot of the time is taken up with classes and homework and so on." Liz blinked in surprise. "Yeah, I'm still learning a lot, both with tutors who come to teach us inside the castle, and actual lectures at the Royal Academy. That's a pretty small school by Earth standards, actually, partly because it's very exclusive and secure - every student and teacher has to have extensive background checks and so on."

"Okay." Liz thought about that. "I guess when the regime changed from Kivar to Max and Vorjal, they had to do a bunch of housecleaning there, huh?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah - except for anybody who was so entirely apolitical that neither side would object to them. There were a lot of people with definite Kivarian sympathies who had to be forced out - and a number of equally qualified Liaretians who had been kept out and could be let in. I don't know that many of the details, though; I wasn't really involved. Don't think that there was fighting in the school or anything like that, relatively quiet transition."

"Alright," Liz said. "So, what kind of things are you learning? Antarian culture and history? How to use your developing powers?"

"A bit of that, but also stuff that's more specific to my own interests," Maria said. "A lot about Antarian musical forms, and those of the nearby and colonial planets, even a few that are further from Antar than Earth is."

"Oh, man, too cool!" Alex exclaimed, pulling his chair a bit closer. "You **have** to tell me more about that..."

"Okay, but not now, Alex," Maria called back. "This is a semi-private conversation, and it _will_ not be derailed from the topics that Liz sets me." Isabel reached out and pulled Alex's chair back in, which made several people chuckle.

"I don't mind hearing more about this," Liz admitted, smiling broadly. Alex didn't move to come closer again, but he seemed to still be paying attention. "Do you want to actually try being a - well, do they have anything like our popular musicians on Antar? Recording artists whose work is mass-distributed to millions and millions of customers?"

"Well, yeah, it's not that different from our system," Maria admitted. "Except - well, it's a bit less... less materialistic than the American economy? No, that's not quite the right... they're not so much about accumulating disposable goodies like CDs." Liz nodded. "There are some permanent recordings, but it's more about something a little like a cross between the radio and Napster."

"Hmm, interesting," Liz said. "Speaking of Napster, it's dead now, but I've got to show you iTunes before we go back."

"Fine by me, whatever that is," Maria said. "And actually - I'm sort of already on the music network on Antar. Because I was so interested, and already a sort of celebrity because of my arrival with Michael and our wedding and all that - this small production partnership took me on and I cut what amounts to a small album. I'd love to actually go on tour over there, but the Royal guard is worried about the possibility of assassins."

"Okay, well, that does tell me a lot," Liz said, trying to absorb all of it. "So, you've got classes, and recording your music..."

"That was nearly a year ago," Maria disclaimed.

"So you haven't done anything with music other than learn since then?" Liz asked.

"Umm - no, I've been working on writing some new stuff," Maria admitted. "Just over the past few months."

"Okay, so what else was going on in your life in between there?" Liz asked.

"Well - charity work, in a way," Maria mumbled modestly. "The advocacy groups for human refugees on Antar were after me to help them out, as a spokeswoman if nothing else, since the wedding banns were announced. I've tried to do more than that, to actually get my hands dirty helping to build houses and what have you."

"Okay, I knew that they have humans over on Antar, but they have advocacy groups now?" Liz asked.

Maria actually shot her an 'I know that you're really not that stupid' look. "These people were abductees, Liz - taken away from their homes and everything that they knew, interrogated for months or years to satisfy somebody's curiosity about humans and Earth and anything else they knew, and then dumped on Antar because Zan's father and his father had made a policy of giving them - not quite asylum, I guess, but allowing them to immigrate. Then Kivar took over."

"Ohh. Sorry, it makes sense now, but I didn't remember all of those details," Liz insisted. "Once Kivar was in charge, he wouldn't cut anybody a break if they couldn't do anything for him, humans least of all. Did things get really bad for them?"

"In places, yeah," Maria admitted. "In other provinces, Antarians were used to them being fairly decent neighbours and kept letting them integrate, though there wasn't as much funding for the programs to help new human arrivals get started. Of course, Max and Vorjal and the others have made sure to reverse that trend as much as they could."

"Glad to hear it," Liz admitted. "Say, we discovered a little while ago that my grandfather on my mother's side might have been abducted."

"Really? Crazy," Maria said. "Like..."

"We're still not sure of many details," Liz told her. "And I didn't really want to get us side-tracked..."

And then, they really **did** get sidetracked, because Max showed up in the doorway once again, with Serena right behind him. She looked about the same as when Liz had met her that morning, with short auburn hair, curled and tangled around her face, but her clothes were a bit more formal, knee-length silk skirt, and an open jacket over a camisole.

"Welcome back, Max, and welcome to 'Czechoslovakia,' Serena," Liz said, standing up, and offering her hand across the table. "I'm glad that you could make it."

"Well, heck, I wouldn't a missed the chance to beam up to a genuine Antarian starship," Serena admitted. "Still not one hundred percent convinced that you guys need my help to save the world, or whatever, but I said that I'd come check it out and here I am."

"Okay." Liz held her pose, since neither of them had moved to shake her hand, and after a moment Serena made the gesture, though without much obvious enthusiasm. She sat back down, and Max took the seat opposite her, Serena sitting down next to him. "Speaking of which, Max, do you have any idea how we're going to find the alien creature planted in Carlsbad?"

"The plan isn't to look for it ourselves, so much as to use bait and draw it to us," Max explained, and there was something about his voice and the look on his face that suggested to Liz that he didn't want to go into much more detail right then, (possibly because Serena was around,) so she took the hint and dropped the subject.

"Maria was telling us about life on Antar - the music that she'd made for the people there, and working with charities for human refugees," Liz explained to them. "It sounds quite interested. I'm actually looking forward to going back with you now." She had been looking for a safe subject, but looking at Serena again, Liz suddenly realized that she had probably opened up an entirely different barrel of worms. Oh well - maybe it was better to have this out with Serena now.

"So you're going back **home** soon, and taking little Lizzie with you?" Serena said, a bit grumpily. "Are the two of you engaged or ain't you, anyway?" She looked pointedly from Liz's necklace to Max's bare neck.

"We are," Max told her. "But it's fairly recent, and I don't think I've even actually told Liz that she needs to get me one in exchange."

"Oh, yeah, okay," Liz said, suddenly seeing it. The engagement pendant might be an equivalent to a ring, but it obviously wasn't only for the women. She'd noticed Michael wearing two chains around his neck - presumably one for the engagement and the other for his actual wedding vows. Except - "Hey, Maria, why do you only have one pendant yourself?"

"Hmm?" Maria fingered the chain around her neck, and then she smirked slightly and brought her left hand up with her fingers spread. Liz and Max smiled, while a sullen look quickly came onto Serena's face.

"Of course."

"Yeah, I wore an engagement pendant for a little while, before the wedding, but it never really felt right, and I stopped. This is my true engagement token from Michael, and I need no other." Maria smiled a little smugly at Serena. "I know how to use it better now, too."

"Now, now," Max warned Maria mildly. "No taunting her, please. We're still trying to recruit Serena for a dangerous mission."

"Okay, okay." Maria sighed. "So where were we before getting sidetracked onto pendants and such?"

"Going back home," Liz prompted meaningfully, nodding at Serena and Max. "Oh, sorry, if that could be thought of as taunting, I didn't mean it to be."

"Yeah, right," Serena said unhappily. "So, how about it, Max? If I want a ride back to Antar, do you think you can oblige me?"

"Hmm... that's admittedly tricky," Max said. "Not that I particularly want to keep you 'stranded' on Earth if here's where you want to be. There might be a few tricky questions to answer back there - if certain people find out that you're from Earth and the circumstances, that is. We might be able to avoid that entirely... but the biggest problem is space. Not outer space, so much as inner - inside the ship."

"Oh, come on, I know it might be tough, but surely you can squeeze one more in," Serena said beseechingly.

"Frankly, I'm going to have to squeeze just to get - everybody I've been planning to take on the trip home," Max said softly. "And you being around was never in the plan, Serena."

"Then maybe I'm not around for your big battle," she snapped.

Max waited until she stormed to her feet and took the two steps through the doorway of the Royal mess. Then he called her name softly, "Serena," and turned his chair about forty degrees toward the door, so he still wasn't really facing it. By turning his head, he just managed to get her in peripheral vision as she turned slowly around to glare at all three of them: Max, Liz, and Maria.

"What's it worth to you if I can arrange travel for you to Antar, and back if you wish - but not quite immediately?" Max asked softly. "I'll see if there's a way to manage for this trip, but the other is my backup offer. Are you interested?"

"Yes, if you're not just yanking my chain," Serena grumbled. "If you're trying to play me, Evans, then I swear..."

"Then what?" Maria nearly clapped as part of Michael came into view next to Serena in the hallway, right up in her personal space, with a big grin on his face. "It's nice to see you - Serena. Just got out of the infirmary, foot's good as new again, and I just **knew** that I had to come find you and say... hello."

Serena turned her glare around to Michael and then swivelled it back into Max's direction, but by that point it wasn't holding up that well. Certainly the momentum of her threat had been disrupted by Michael's provident appearance, (and his somewhat threatening body language, belied as it was by his chipper tone and big smile.) Somewhat undone, Serena stomped back into the room and took her chair once again. Michael followed her in, paused at the chair on the other side of Serena from Max, then reconsidered and stepped between the two tables to take his place next to his wife.

"So, what have we been talking about?"

"This and that," Liz replied airily, sensing that nobody really wanted to rehash it all for Michael. "So, what kind of tactics are we going to need to take care of this alien creature?"

It was just the right question to ask. "I'm glad you asked," Max said. "The basic idea will be to surround it with protective fields, in order to keep it from making an escape, and to defend all of our people. It may be that the easiest way to get the kill will simply be to compress it with energy until its body is crushed..."

#

They didn't really talk about battle plans too long, just until Serena was upset and bored enough to excuse herself and stalk away. Michael had an impressive sequence of toasts to make on the occasion of Max and Liz's engagement, (Liz lost count at either nine or ten, but that was almost the end,) and Alex and Maria sang them a few songs.

Raydeleen, an alien woman with a lot of presence in person, came in around then to tell Max that they were making the descent to Carlsbad. Max brought Liz up to the small 'bridge' of the ship, (well, actually they were standing right behind the bridge,) to watch through the front windows as they plunged through the clouds of the Earth's atmosphere and finally to a landing in the New Mexico desert. "Cloaking device working fine?" Max asked the pilot, getting an affirmative answer in Antarian, (all the crew seemed to have learned English, but weren't necessarily that comfortable with it,) and turned back to Liz. "Okay, well, it's probably a good idea to go to bed now, early morning tomorrow and all that." He started to guide her aft along the corridor. "Considering how crowded we're going to be for the night, I hope that you don't have any problem with... sharing my bunk, my dear?"

Liz giggled. "No, I actually think that I'll be okay with that, considering what else has gone on between us this day." She hugged his side and let out a satisfied breath. "That bunk is a little small, but I **suppose** that I'm okay with snuggling close to you, honey."

"Alright, and..." Max stopped in mid-stride, and Liz bumped her foot into his leg. "Sorry, I just thought of this - between all the Serena stuff, I didn't make sure that you packed a bag with anything you thought was essential for a few days. We can arrange some things with whatever's on hand and molecular manipulation, but..."

Liz shook her head. "Come on, Max, I'm not - what, fifteen still? When you left with Tess and said that Michael and Maria would be 'taking us upstairs,' I realized that it was time to pack." She thought about that as Max started walking again. "Well, actually, it wasn't until after I'd talked with Kyle and Ava some, and we started playing cards, that I clued in. I took ten minutes away from the game to grab a few things, and so did Ava. Kyle was a bit upset that it only came up after he was too far away from his own room, that Tess hadn't mentioned it when he was showing her around, but I think that he's determined to make the best of 'roughing it.'"

"Oh, okay," Max said, smiling. "So, where **is** your stuff, then?"

Liz tried to remember where she'd have dropped it after coming up. She definitely remembered grabbing it before Maria activated her orb. "Probably the rec lounge in the stern?"

"Okay." Max pressed a contact, and she realized that they'd gotten to his cabin already as the wall swung out. "Do you want me to go get it for you, or...?"

"No, come on, Max! I can get around the ship fine, where I know where I'm going - and you probably couldn't tell my bag apart from Ava's, if she left hers there too, or Isabel's as far as I know. I'll see you in a few minutes."

"Okay, but one thing first."

"What's that?" Liz asked, and was actually pleasantly surprised by the big kiss he planted on her. It was more than a minute before Liz was actually continuing on her way towards the stern of the ship.

Max was lying on his bunk and staring right at her when she got back and opened up the door. (If there were privacy circuits on these doors, he must have programmed his to open with her fingerprints or whatever.) "So, what, were you just staring at the door the whole time I was gone?" she teased, stepping inside the room. "Wasn't that boring?"

"Not the whole time, but about when I guessed you might have had enough time to go and be nearly back," Max admitted. "Because I couldn't risk looking away at the right moment, and missing a millisecond of watching you."

"That's cheesy, but sweet," Liz admitted, sitting down on the chair and letting the door swing closed. "Notice that you also found time to get into a nifty little pair of Antarian pyjamas." Max looked down at his nightclothes and then grinned back at her, not saying anything. "Okay, well, if we're actually going to get much sleep, then maybe you should - I don't know, look away, while I get changed into my own stuff."

"Oh, come on," Max exclaimed. "Like if I see you changing, we'll both be overcome by such passion that we couldn't keep ourselves from making love long into the night?"

"Well, maybe... I don't know." Liz hesitated, and then shook her head. "Okay, you wanna watch? Fine." And she stood up and started to undress, first tossing off her wife-beater, (leaving the pendant in place,) and then undoing her belt and letting the baggy jeans sink down to her ankles. Shooting one hand into the bag that she'd brought, she snatched out her sky-blue cotton nightshirt, and pulled it on, letting the fabric fall nearly to her knees as it always did. "Satisfied?"

"Well, not really, I mean, it hardly lasted long enough," Max said, a silly grin on his face and barely managing to stifle a string of chuckles. "And you've still got your shoes on; hope you're not going to wear them into bed."

Liz had to laugh at that point. "Yeah. Not to mention these pants still hangin' at my ankles." And she sat down again, taking off the shoes one at a time. At one point her right knee went well off to the side, and her shirt fell away from it slightly, baring a length of her inner thigh, and Max's eyes immediately focused on her exposed flesh. Liz laughed, twitched her other knee as if about to move it aside as well and give him another look at her underwear - and then resumed the task at hand. Soon her shoes, jeans, belt, and tank top were all neatly lined up on the floor next to the wall, folded where applicable.

Max only had time to say, "Well, are you quite...?" before Liz had crossed the space between them and was lying next to him on the edge of the bed. Because he had been lying quite close to the near edge of the bed, she didn't have much space to lie down at first, but he backed away happily enough now that she was that close to him.

"I love you, Max," Liz breathed, just because it was true and seemed to bear a lot of repeating just at this stage. "Just out of curiosity, what's Antarian thinking like on - well, consummating the marriage before the wedding?"

"Well..." And Max reached out his right hand to touch her left arm, (which was uppermost in the positions that they had taken,) and then stroke her left side affectionately. "That's a complicated subject, as you might imagine, and not to be explained in just one sentence."

"Could you please indulge me for a few of them, then?" Liz asked him sweetly. "It's a subject of considerable interest to me - not an immediate need-to-know thing, but still..."

Max chuckled. "Well, let's see... as far as I know there's not much of the same moralistic or religious condemnation that some people still have on Earth. However, it's seen as a tricky question of judgement and timing, in which the couple must navigate several temptations to make the decision that's best for them in the long term. Part of the difference, maybe, is that the act of - of mating generally has more serious psychological and emotional effects on the participants for Antarians than with humans."

"As Michael and Maria discovered, that summer before you all left," Liz pointed out.

"Well - yes. Of course, they were also dealing with the mating instinct driving them to get Maria pregnant, which as you might remember, it's possible to avoid triggering if you know how and are **very** disciplined about the regimen." Max sighed. "Anyway, even for a - a couple who would have a bright future together, making the decision to become fully intimate too soon might - affect their priorities, bringing their lives completely together before they're ready for it. There are some people back home who think that describes Michael and Maria, actually, but they've gotten good at ignoring doubters by now." He sighed, and Liz giggled nervously. "And - and this is just academic and not about anyone I really know, exactly - but there are cautionary stories about young lovers who - who aren't a good match - dysfunctional relationship type stuff, but get too involved and bond psychically before they realize that they'd be better off apart. There are ways for unhealthy links like that to be severed, but it's difficult, dangerous, and doesn't always work. 'Getting too involved' isn't always about sex, either - there are other ways for a strong link like that to be created, as I think that we both know."

"Yeah, I'm with you chief," Liz said softly. "Sorry, um - I know that I started this subject, but I just..."

"Don't want to hear any more of it right now," Max filled in. "I'm not too surprised, actually, and sorry if I dwelled for too long on the bad stuff."

"It's alright," Liz said. "Fair answer. Just - well, maybe we should concentrate on getting to sleep."

"Sure," Max said, smiling, and touching a contact on the bunk, so that the lights faded to absolute darkness. "Want to see my favourite way of drifting off to sleep lately?"

"Umm, I don't know what that even means," Liz said, noticing how the faintest echoes of his voice seemed to mix with hers in the darkness. "But if you want to show me something that you think I'd like, then sure."

It was about a second later that a sort of kaleidoscopic light sprang into existence between them. "It's called a Torrie-teng, a common way of using powers back home," Max explained, his mouth obscured by the lights but his eyes focusing on hers. "You just sort of stare into it and it makes you fall asleep really quickly - you generally sleep well and deeply too, but not deeply enough that it's hard for someone or something really trying to wake you up. A few minutes after I drift off, it'll fade away."

"How clever," Liz said, letting her eyes be drawn to the heart of the Torrie-teng. "It seems to already be working..."

#

Liz woke to the most incredible music all around her - vaguely orchestral in feel, but full of the sounds of instruments that weren't in orchestras on earth, and possibly didn't even exist on Earth - she particularly noticed the prevalence of something that had the tone of a woodwind, but slid from one note to another in the same way that a trombone or a fiddle could.

Somehow, as she had slumbered deeply, Liz must have turned around on the bunk, which meant that she was facing away from Max, into the rest of his room and towards the bed - but on the upside, this way he could spoon her from behind, his arm draped across her body in the most loving way she could imagine, and the length of his body pressing into hers from behind - including a piece of stiff anatomy that she was momentarily tempted to make a point of discussion, but unfortunately had to admit that the 'timing' for it probably wasn't right yet.

So she turned around to face Max, and could tell from the look on his face and the blinking of his eyes that he was just waking up too. "Nice music," she told him. "Did you queue this up especially, or is it just whatever was on the ship's muzak channel at this moment?"

"Oh, hmm?" Max had to take a moment to wake up more before answering, but he didn't ask Liz to repeat her question. "Neither, quite - it's a random shuffle from my personal music library. This is the North Tilles symphony, actually, playing a piece by the famous Antarian composer Jormader - but I'm not going to try translating the designation for you, if that's okay."

"No, that's fine," Liz agreed. "Though I guess I'm going to have to learn a lot of Antarian pretty soon."

"Yeah, I guess so, but we can leave that until after the primary mission," Max told her. "Actually, our trip back should be plenty of time."

"Right." Liz looked around the cabin. "And I guess, bearing in mind what you said about crowding to Serena, I'll be moving in here with you for the trip back."

"Umm, yeah, actually - why, is it so bad?" Max looked around the room. "It's really about the same overall area as Michael and Maria's cabin, though they spent more of it on the bed."

Liz had to smile. "It's a bit of an odd notion to get used to, especially since my room with Ava is at least three times the size, but as long as I'm with you I'll be fine - I really believe that." She felt, more than heard, a faint rumbling. "And surprisingly, after all the Antarian cuisine I put away last night, I'm hungry again. Does custom require that we should clean and dress before going out for breakfast, or are pyjamas and bed-head alright?" She stood up.

"How about... neither," Max said, crawling over to the edge of the bed and reaching for her hand. "As in, leave the others to fend for themselves for a while. I'll order us up anything you want from my personal food slot, and bring it to you for breakfast in bed."

"Hmm." Liz had to admit that she found the notion appealing. "Well, I guess for that to work, we'll have to switch places, won't we? Unless I decide that I'd rather bring **you** goodies."

"You don't really know how to work the controls yet," Max pointed out. "I'll teach you, and we can do it that way next time if you like."

"Next time. I think I like a lot," Liz admitted, and stepped back towards the bed, but Max waved her away with a gesture. So she backed away, and he got up and stepped away from the bunk in a different direction. Of course.

The breakfast was nice, but unfortunately in Liz's opinion, Max's sense of duty didn't really let him dawdle over it, or her. Soon they were in the shower, scrubbing each other's backs in much too businesslike a way, and so on. When they got out and back into the cabin proper, Max went to one of his drawers and got out a uniform similar to the one he had worn first when meeting her the day before. Instead of putting it on, though, he laid it on the chair and then gestured for her to examine the clothing.

"What?" When Liz examined the pieces of the outfit more closely, it was hard not to realize that even allowing for a reasonable stretchy factor, they were too small for Max - and tailored for a woman of something like her own measurements. "Is this getup for me?"

"Um, yeah - I didn't mention this before?" From the too-wide grin on Max's face, she knew that he knew it hadn't come up yet, though probably he had meant to and then been distracted by too many other things. "The best available in Antarian combat suits." She shot him an even more dubious look. "Yes, I'm serious. They're tight to keep anybody, or anything, from being able to grab you by an edge of your clothing, and drag you down. That'll be especially important against the beast, I think. By now it should have started to grow its tentacles."

"Okay," Liz continued, "but..."

"The material is deceptively light and flexible, so as to not impair your movement, but it's strengthened at a molecular level to prevent cuts or punctures, cushion you against impacts, and help divert or deflect energy attacks. Even your head and hands can be protected, with the hood and gloves, but that would interfere with your own ability to channel energy out, so it's pretty much a last-ditch defensive measure."

"Okay, okay, I'll give it a try," Liz admitted with bad grace. Stripping off her nightshirt again, (and thus revealing herself in underwear and and even worse mood than last night,) she first pulled on the dark navy pants with pink-purple stripes up the sides. To her surprise, they weren't a chore to slide up past her hips and to her waist, even though the material clung to her legs almost like a second skin. Intrigued, she climbed into the long-sleeved and high-necked top, which was a bit tougher, trying to cling when it wasn't in the right position yet, but still it didn't take long until she was fully dressed in both pieces of the outfit. They even seemed to join together at her midriff, though she could still tell that she wasn't wearing a single jumpsuit. It was an odd sensation.

"And don't forget the boots," Max said, as he pulled his own pants on. (He'd started with the top.) Liz had to look for a few seconds before noticing the footwear standing next to one leg of the chair, and she sat down to examine them and her bare feet before bringing them together. Black boots, nothing very extraordinary looking, with maybe a wide one inch heel, and a fake-leather kind of feel to them, only long enough to reach halfway to her knees, which she generally found a comfortable height for boots.

So she slipped her left foot into the left boot, not sure why she wasn't bothering with socks, and again felt the sensation of the cuff of the uniform pants bonding with the inside of the boot, not making a physical join, but ensuring that nothing would be able to attack her through the gap - that was it. It was something to do with the way these pieces had been designed to work as a single suit of armour, she had to assume. If she donned the gloves and hood that Max mentioned, presumably the same effect would 'bond' them with her top.

And that would be a good thing to know how to do, or at least... "Max? The gloves and hood - where do I get them?"

Max smiled at her. "Check your pockets." And he patted his own top in the appropriate spots.

Ah, okay. Liz had checked her pants for pockets from the inside, and found none, but hadn't made the same inspection of the top. There were curved stripes of white running from her shoulders to her stomach, and the lower thirds of these to where they met were apparently the outer linings of her pockets. Inside one she found two thin black gloves, and the other being a shape of fabric that could possibly be a hood. Well enough. She didn't really want to try them out now. "So what now?"

"Now we go out to the connected rooms," Max said with a big grin, "and see all of our troops gathered in their armour."

#

They made an impressive assembly, crowded into the Royal mess and the lounge, (both rooms now empty of tables or chairs.) Liz couldn't shake the feeling that what she was looking at seemed more like the origin story of a new Marvel comic superhero group than any other kind of army assembling for battle - though few superhero groups, she had to admit, would have their costumes harmonizing so well in terms of color and style. There were individual differences in the detailing of each outfit, but the basic background color was always the same dark blue, (was it the Royal color for Antar?) and the styles of extra touches seemed to follow the same patterns over and over, repeated in different accent colors.

Michael, Maria, Tess, and the three crew seemed to be quite as home in their uniforms as Max was, which seemed natural, they'd all have had opportunity to practice in them if not use them in earnest. (Max had mentioned his duel with Kivar - had they both been wearing 'armour' like this? Liz actually wanted to see video of that fight if anybody had taken some along.)

The other five felt about as uncertain of their new suits of armour as she did. Serena, in fact, seemed to be disgusted at her getup, even though she was mismatched from everybody else, which Liz figured would suit her more than conformity - her base color was midnight black instead of navy blue, and the bright fiery red patches and yellow piping didn't really fit the patterns. Liz supposed that her outfit would have had to be fabricated overnight, and Max or Tess had decided to make the stylistic changes. Ava and Kyle seemed to be well matched and happy in their complimentary suits, (which made them look to Liz unfortunately like the little super twins,) Isabel was constantly stretching and fidgeting in her own outfit as if worried that it hadn't really been made in proportion to her tall figure, and Alex...

"Hey, Alex!" Liz exclaimed, moving over to him and Isabel. "I - well, I hadn't actually expected to see you suited up with the rest of us."

"Yes, I know," Alex said with a long-suffering smile. "But I made my case, and everybody's signed off on it - well, except for the big guy, because he was so busy with his new **fiancee**, but I don't think that Max will mind." Liz giggled self-consciously. "Officially, I'm a lookout, not to get involved in the fighting, but I've been issued a uniform to help protect me if I wind up in danger despite all I can do to stay out of it."

"Yes," Isabel said. "And despite all of Alex's protestations, I think that it's significant that a uniform in his size was **available,** without needing to be customized or tailored." Alex chuckled.

And right then, Max's most authoritative voice sounded. "All right, people, we're heading out and splitting up into small groups for drill. Kyle, Serena, you'll be with me, learning and practicing at making protective fields. Ava, you go with Swander and Michael, doing target practice and learning more about different ways to channel energy on the attack. Liz - you're with Eleeron and Tess to start, learning about ways to use powers to divert and distract the enemy. Isabel, you're to go with Raydeleen and Maria, practicing using telekinesis to roll with falls or take tough hits without hurting yourself as much. Alex, you can observe whatever group you like but you aren't participating, sorry. After two hours, we meet for a midmorning snack and rotate groups. Alright?"

#

By the time they came back into the ship for lunch, Liz did not feel 'alright', but she wasn't about to complain about the training regimen, especially since she realized that what she was learning might well save her life.

First, training with Liz and doctor Eleeron. She'd been almost worried that Tess was going to try to teach her the mind warp - that was one application of the power that frankly Liz didn't want to have anything to do with. But they didn't really touch on that directly, although some of the techniques of blinding an opponent or scrambling their other senses at a key moment seemed to overlap. (Before the foursome left, Liz had always gotten the impression that the mind-warp was a particular talent of Tess that few others could match, so maybe she couldn't teach it even if she wanted to.)

They had covered illusions in other ways, normally by directly projecting sound, light, scent particles or forces, so that the opponent would really be seeing/hearing/smelling/feeling whatever it was, even if that thing wasn't real. This was in many ways more difficult than sneaking false commands into the sensory channels of the mind, as Tess could do with the mind-warp, and could not be selective to only one person, though they had the advantage of not being so difficult to use against multiple points of view.

There were other techniques as well - confusion fields, small changes to the terrain a footstep away from the 'enemy', special ways of making dust float to make it an eye hazard for longer, and much more. Then, after a short break with a sweet and slightly spicy Antarian beverage and little cream cakes, she started working with Ava and Raydeleen on taking falls and impacts. Even though she'd learned a lot in that discipline, her body was sore and her bruises felt like they had bruises of their own.

"Anything I can do to help, darling?" Max muttered, coming up behind her, and she felt a surge of power coming into her shoulder, where the joint had been feeling particularly abused, and soothing the entire area."

"Yes, but if you're truly a considerate and gracious king you'll volunteer your talents for Maria, Isabel, and Ava as well," Liz told him. "Is there a particular reason why you had all the girls except Tess going through the falling and impacts?"

"Well - I guess I did want to make sure that all of you knew how to take care of yourselves as best you could before we got into a tough situation, honey," Max pointed out. "I know that women aren't completely fragile, but there are a few physical and biological reasons that you do need extra care. Kyle is going to get his turn this afternoon, and Tess will probably be drilling with him, though she's practiced this before of course. So has Maria, as you might have noticed."

"And what about you and Michael?" Liz pointed out. "I know that you're big strong guys and you know it already, but how about a refresher?"

"Probably a good idea," he admitted. "Last rotation this afternoon."

"So we'll keep going around - and I'll get to do the target practice?" Liz asked. "And the protective fields?"

"Yes, of course my darling - and then we'll join up into larger groups for some different lessons." Max opened the door to his cabin and pointed down on the bunk. "Strip and lie down. That'll make it as easy as possible for me to heal you."

"Oh, sure, sure," Liz said, turning around to wink at him. But she did step next to the bunk and start taking off her top.

And sure enough, as Max's hands played over her sore back, the bruises seemed to fade away. (He didn't even need to look in her eyes for this, she realized with some surprise.) "So, when do you think we'll be ready to start luring the beast to us?"

"Tomorrow, I guess, after Michael and Maria's reception," Max answered casually. "Now don't speak for a minute. I need you to keep your muscles still for just a little bit, okay?"

Liz kept herself still, with a bit of difficulty.


	5. Chapter 5

"Again," Serena barked strictly. "Come on, Parker, you're gonna have to do better than that!"

Liz nearly let loose a growl of frustration, and turned over to the enigmatic alien lady, Raydeleen. Dressed up in her own stretch-fabric combat suit, Raydeleen just shrugged slightly and nodded at Liz in a way that somehow made it completely clear that she had no problems at all with how Serena was conducting the lesson, and saw no reason to step in until she was called upon herself. "Come on, Serena, I was within a foot of the target that time. In battle, that's going to be close enough. I - I can keep drilling, but I'm not sure it's realistic to expect anything better than..."

"It **might** be close enough," Serena replied, her tone now sounding somehow less unfriendly. (If still not exactly 'buddy-buddy.') "If all you need is to make contact with the enemy, then yeah, it's that big apparently, even allowing it a chance to move slightly after you take what for the sake of argument I'm going to call 'your aim,' then yeah, you pegged it." Serena stepped a bit closer to Liz.

"On the other hand, what if the only way to save Max's _life_, Liz, would be to drill this son of a bitch... **in the eye!**" As she screamed the last few words, Serena shot out her right hand towards Liz's face, her long and painted nails hovering only about a quarter-inch from Liz's left eye - Liz flinched, and her eyelashes actually brushed against the lacquer.

"Dammit, Lonnie! Uh, I mean... Serena." Liz struggled to regain her composure, noticed that she was standing near to a flat rock, and sat herself down on it in the hopes that not being on her feet might help. (As before, the 'nano-fabric' of her own stretchy uniform moved slightly to adjust to the way she flexed her hips and knees, in a way that Liz couldn't decide if she found disturbing or pleasant.)

Serena did not give her the chance to continue. "Parker - Liz." Liz looked up at the other young woman. "I believe that you can do this. Sure, some people simply cannot hit a bulls-eye unless the gods of blind luck smile upon them, but I am sure and convinced that you are not one of them. You **can** do this, if you believe that it's nothing more than what you're capable of, and if you focus every part of your will and your attention on this drill, which is twice as much as most people give it when they say that they're 'trying their best'..."

"I swear, Lonnie, if you actually quote 'Do or do not, there is no try' to me, then I am gonna..."

"No, I hate Yoda pretty bad myself," Serena admitted with a smile. "Pointy-eared little freak. But sorry - I interrupted you. If I **had** quoted Yoda, what would you surely have done, Liz?" Her smile turned into a slightly mocking grin. "Drill me in the eye with a power bolt? Maybe it'd be worth it to push you that far."

Surely enough, Liz felt a surge of fury at Serena's taunting - and also, on a different and more rational level of her mind, saw the sense of something that she had said. Turning back to the target that had been set up ten yards away across the sand, Liz raised a hand and concentrated on her powers. It took a bit of self-control to not simply fling a blast of power at the target, but that would not accomplish anything with respect to improving her aim. Instead, she narrowed her focus to only allow a small bolt of energy, and focused on her target, steadying eye and hand as much as she possibly could. If she could only...

Something occurred to Liz just a fraction of a second before she was about to take the shot. Before, she had always treated aiming her shots like she was sending off a physical projectile - hitting a cue ball in pool with the cue, or even firing a bullet out of a gun. (As much as the thought of firearms still disturbed her, years after her own shooting.) In either case, or anything similar, you took a bearing, sent the shot off, and hoped for the best. There might or might not be any forces operating on your projectile afterwards, but the point was that because of the distance involved, a small error in the initial angle meant a large discrepancy in the final result.

But she was working with energy, not matter, and different rules might apply there. For instance, consider lightning bolts. Dozens of lightning bolts might hit the Empire State building in a single thunderstorm, not simply because it was a high target. There were other spots, empty spots, of similar height above Manhattan, that did not have lightning pass through them so often, and if the bolts were aimed randomly there should be no difference between a solid object and empty air in that respect.

But lightning **did** orient on the tall buildings, and the mechanism had to do with traces of invisible current that drifted up from the Earth to the clouds. Lightning oriented on those traces for its return journey, and the traces would go through buildings if they could because those offered less resistance than ordinary air. So... all Liz had to do was run a trace of invisible energy through the air to the target, correcting it if she needed to because it was still connected to her. That trace could be used to guide the actual power bolt.

It worked like a charm, She ran her invisible 'line' out to the center of the bulls-eye, pulled it 'tight' to avoid retracing the slightly wandering path left after all of her corrections, and launched a bolt down it to also land - dead center. She turned towards Serena, torn between exulting in her triumph and attempting to chew Serena out for not pointing out the winning tactic and letting her discover it for herself.

"Yes, that's a handy trick," Serena drawled, "and we've all used it on occasion to land a tricky shot, but generally it takes too long for the heat of combat. Certainly you took your time, Parker. So come on, I see you've let your tracer line collapse, so give me another bulls-eye, on the count of three! One, two, three..." Completely caught by surprise, Liz nevertheless exerted herself and fired - and came within two inches of dead center this time. Serena wasn't even a little bit encouraging about that.

Liz was feeling dispirited when she could finally rotate to Max's team, despite the fact that she had managed to get to the point where she could land bulls-eyes for about one shot in three, stay pretty consistently within a one-inch margin of error the rest of the time, and even Serena had judged that her marksmanship 'would do alright.' Maybe it was just the effort of honing her control over her powers to the utmost all day that was getting to her.

"Hi, honey," Max said, hugging her as she came over, and in the process trapping her nutty-bar snack next to her side, (along with the arm and hand with which she had been carrying it.) She hugged him back with considerable feeling.

Somebody cleared her throat not far away. "Is there going to be an actual lesson, 'teach', or just a make out session, because I definitely did not sign up for any three-way action like that."

Liz pulled back just enough to be able to watch Max roll his eyes in exasperation. "I think that we're still on break, Missus Guerin, so just hold your horses and go somewhere else for a few minutes if you don't want to see me hugging my fiancee. Something tells me she's having a hard day."

"Who isn't?" Maria snarked. "I think you skimped on fixing my ankle, by the way, healer man."

Liz smiled, and kissed Max sweetly. "She's right, I think that this is somewhat tough on everybody - except maybe those of you who were prepared for it. We're not used to being an army, if we ever were."

"Yeah, I know," Max agreed. "But someone has to be, and we're the ones available. Damn Kivar and all his crazy schemes."

That seemed to cover it for that topic, and Liz didn't really feel the need to open another one, just stay there in Max's arms until Maria drifted back over and they separated. That had the natural consequence that she had to crunch through her nutty bar during Max's initial talk about force fields. Maria glared at her a little, but it didn't take her too long to finish.

One thing that surprised Liz, since she'd been thinking about specialties among her hybrid friends, was that the green force shield that Max had learned to make during junior year was not a proper specialty, as in something that he had a particular affinity for that few other Antarians could match, like his healing, Isabel's dream walking, or (as far as she knew) Tess' mind warps. Max had figured out how to focus his energy that way on a very instinctive level and so had been unable to teach the others, but apparently with the right words of explanation and illustrative pictures to aid in visualization, instruction was possible. The green color, on the other hand, was something to do with Max's natural energy, and was slightly different according to the person who was calling forth a shield. (The properties of force fields could be varied in terms of what they would and would not keep out, but apparently even these changes didn't affect the energy color, though other visual differences could be seen.)

Liz's shields were kind of a pinkish-rose color, and Maria's were a middling blue. The three of them actually blended nicely when Max had them practice linking up to form a single protective globe around themselves. Then they started on other variants, like a horizontal field in the air that could catch someone who was falling, or even be walked on if you were careful.

#

The door chime sounded on Max's cabin, and Liz reached out for the contact that Max had pointed out as the open button, then changed her mind and opted for the intercom function. As Maria had demonstrated the day before, that didn't require any activation circuit. "Max isn't in here," she called in the direction of the closed door, sure enough that her voice would carry beyond.

"I know - he's helping Alex and Isabel out with preparations for the 'wedding reception.'" The voice was unfamiliar, and that made Liz sit up suddenly enough to hit her head on the 'ceiling' of the bunk. A feminine tone, but not Isabel or Serena... or Ava or Tess... or Maria. Who did that leave? There was somebody she was missing; she knew that, but not one of the usual suspects. "I actually came to speak with you, if it's convenient."

"Ummm." By reflex Liz looked down at herself, the 'am I decent for company?' check running through her mind. The results seemed promising - feet bare, but she had slipped back into her baggy, unfashionable jeans from yesterday, (after she had cleaned them somewhat with her own powers of moving molecules,) and a pink t-shirt that had been in the bag she'd brought to the ship with her when she'd teleported here the last time the day before. "Excuse me, but who are you?" She knew that she'd feel foolish when the question was answered, and could probably have answered it herself by opening the door, but neither of those considerations kept the words from coming out through her mouth.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. This is Raydeleen."

Oh, right - the one female on the ship that Liz hadn't considered. But she hadn't heard 'Rayde' speak too much, so it wasn't too surprising that she hadn't clued in. Finally Liz made her finger touch the open door contact, and as the section of wall opened out, the figure of an Antarian woman with orange-red hair and brown eyes stepped in. Immediately Liz remembered what Max had said about this particular Antarian having a small portion of human ancestry, and how she had also been an associate or assistant of Queen Alinda, though he hadn't really explained many of the details there.

"Hello Raydeleen." Liz waved helpfully at the chair, and then immediately wondered if she was acting too haughty, the queen-to-be telling 'the help' where she should take a seat. Oh well, whatever. She probably wouldn't act perfectly with these Antarians, but had to just to her best and see what reaction she got.

Rayde took that seat without any sign of ill feeling. "Sorry if I haven't - been around you much or talked much," Rayde said, starting slowly. "Max has - has taught me much English, but I still don't feel that comfortable with it - it's too new, and I'm not sure what I might have not quite right."

"That's okay," Liz assured her, comforted by the realization that Rayde, also, felt nervous. "You've been speaking great, no mistakes or awkward phrasing so far."

"Thank you. I - I thought that I should come to you, to explain a few things and ask if you had any questions, especially in light of - of the promises that you and Max made last night."

"Promises," Liz repeated softly. She hadn't thought of their engagement in terms of that word, but of course that was what it was. Wasn't there an old legal term for the tort of breaking off an engagement about violation of a promise? "Too young to die, and too old..."

"What's that about?"

"What sharp eyes, you have, Raydeleen," Liz quipped back, and this time Rayde smiled as if she understood the reference. "Umm - the too young do die part is from a song I like - the chorus. Too young to die and to old to believe in promises." She sighed. "I like the song, but I'm not sure at all that I understand it."

"That can be difficult with our musical lyrics too," Rayde agreed with a small smile. "Do you have any 'maybe' interpretations?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Liz agreed. "A teenage girl who's struggling with some terminal disease, maybe, and somebody who loves her tells her that she'll beat it and live a long life. And she doesn't know what her future will be."

"Ahh - a paradox and contradiction, then," Rayde said, seeing it. "If she's truly too young to die, then she must live, but if she's too old to believe in promises, then she has no certainty about that."

"Yes," Liz agreed. "And both sides of the contradiction are uncertain - there's no minimum age to die, or maximum age to believe a promise if you trust the person who's telling you - and if they're not just saying what they want to believe themselves." She shrugged. "But the song isn't really that simple, there's a lot of stuff that I can't quite fit into that interpretation, like references to West Side Story - you don't know what that is either, do you?"

"I can't say that I do."

"Well, that's okay; it's a sidetrack in any event. Was there anything in particular you wanted to explain to me, or am I supposed to have questions to ask first."

"I sort of expected that you would," Rayde put in. "From how Max described you, 'inquisitive' was a fairly good description."

"I guess I am at that," Liz admitted. But she couldn't think of what to ask this lady, except - "So what did you do for or with Queen Alinda? Max didn't really explain that much."

"Oh - I didn't realize that the questions would be about me, but that's okay I guess." Rayde laughed softly. "Well, let's see how to explain it. Alinda has had a consequential amount of health problems over the past ten cycles or so, though she's doing reasonably well right now considering her age. When she missed an important Rebellion meeting for the second time because of her necessary treatments, she exercised an old Antarian social tradition to designate me, one of her ladies-in-waiting, as - well, our word for it is 'Gehrvelkah.'"

"No English translation, I guess," Liz said.

"Not really.'Personal proxy' gets close to the idea. Alinda briefed me on the issues that were important to her and her feelings on them, had speeches written for me on certain occasions. I could go to nearly any event and represent her as I was indeed the old queen Emeritus, Sanren of Liaret's widow. It was rather bizarre in some ways, like I had two personalities, and Alinda could manifest in either of two bodies, her own or mine."

"But that's just figurative," Liz said. "I mean, she didn't actually transfer any of her essence into your body or anything."

"Oh, no, not like that. Occasionally she sent me some of her memories to help me understand what she was trying to tell me, but that was kept to a minimum - probably so as not to confuse me any further about my true identity."

"Okay." Liz chose to as a question that would probably take the story off into a different direction. "How did you come to be working as a lady-in-waiting for a queen in exile in the first place?"

"Full of **unexpected** questions," Rayde decided, with a shake of her smile, but as close as Liz could tell her smile was somewhat admiring. "Well, let's see - I was brought up on a small artificial-habitat space settlement in one of the Antar system's... planetoid belts. Loyalty to the Liaret crown at home and several other settlements in that general orbital path was - was something that was done and believed in without necessarily having a rational reason, just the natural order of things. I'm not sure of the right word..."

"Fanatical?" Liz guessed. "Religious?"

"Hmm - maybe." Rayde shrugged. "Kivar's revolution happened before I was born, of course, but there was never any doubt that we were on the side of the Liaret survivors - willing to fight to the death for the cause, if necessary, though we weren't suicidally stupid about it - like letting Kivar's navy know about our allegiance for no good reason." Liz nodded agreement to this. "Well, fifteen Antarian years ago, a Liaretian courier ship was leaving Antar for their main Sanctuary, when their main cloaking drive failed and one of Kivar's destroyers from the Royal Navy spotted them. They cut main power and started drifting to try and hide as best they could, but needed resources and time to make repairs..."

"And the people of your settlement helped them," Liz guessed. "Probably had been waiting for a chance like that for years."

"More or less. They sent out a salvage tug to bring the Liaretian's ship in to dock - that way it might look like they were just towing in a wreck, if anybody spotted them. The royal party, including Alinda and several of her family, including Vorjal and - and Devinor Granas Liaret, Vorjal's father, who was trapped and executed by Kivar's agents only about a year later... well, they all stayed six days, making their repairs, and waiting until the search for them in the area died down. None of Kivar's ships demanded to search our settlement - we were mostly beneath their notice. And - and when they were ready to leave, my parents were pestering Prince Devinor, asking if there was anything further they could do, and hinting not so subtly that it would be a great honour if anyone from our settlement could join their company and serve royalty directly."

"And they picked you?" Liz asked. "To leave your family and go with them?"

"Well, I'd spent some time with Alinda's other personal staff, though I'd only met her briefly in the days that she'd been there," Rayde said, sighing. "She **had** been looking for someone new, and they asked me if I understood what I was getting into, that serving with them might get me killed and if I changed my mind, it would be up to me to make my own way home and that would be difficult. I - I just gave the answer that I knew my parents would have expected, I didn't really think about it at the time."

"Huh." Liz mulled that over. "So, do you ever resent it - that you joined without having that much of a full disclosure about what the Liaretian cause was really all about?"

Rayde had to think about that in her own turn. "Not really. I've learned more than enough, in retrospect, to justify that original choice, and I've had opportunities to re-dedicate my life to the cause with more knowledge of what that dedication means - like when I accepted the role as Alinda's Gehrvelkah, and when I told Max that I'd come here with him. In a way, I wish that my first choice of all could have been with that sort of real knowledge of what I was choosing - but from the circumstances of my childhood, it would be hard to work that. I came to the inner councils of the Liaret faction in the only way I could, and it was a chance that would have passed me by but for the co-incidences of that day."

"Okay." Liz took a deep breath before starting into another big topic. "What's going to be expected of me, when I go back to Antar with Max? I mean, he says that he'll turn his back on his royal responsibilities for me if he needs to, that he's done enough, but really none of us want it to get that far. Maria was talking last night about her music, but..."

"I think I understand what you're worried about," Rayde said with a smile. "Well, after dealing with Kivar and his unique combination of selfish despotism and proper respect due him as the new King - most of the people of Antar are quite satisfied with Max's free-spirited side - as long as he isn't drawing on the Royal treasury for his own whimsy and..."

"I'm sorry, what?" Liz had to splutter a little. "This is Max Evans we're talking about? Free-spirited, whimsical? Really?"

"Well, not entirely," Rayde admitted. "When he is making decisions about planetary business, Max is **dead** serious about them. But - well, maybe the way I, and the common people, see him is coloured by our expectations of the rest of the Liaretian royalty. Max is passionately curious about his new home, and is sometimes seized by a... a darkly fae impulse to pursue something beautiful and unlikely, or to take the part of somebody who has been through a great personal tragedy."

"If that's free spirited, then sign me up," Liz agreed. As soon as Rayde had mentioned the phrase 'passionately curious about...' the words had started to resonate deep down inside Liz. If she was going to accompany Max to an alien world, then cultivating the seeds of that curiosity within herself might be a valuable - more than a defence mechanism, even, but a purpose to her life beyond Max. Few human souls had had the chance to explore alien worlds, and most of them hadn't had much choice in the matter.

"Yes, entirely," Rayde agreed. "And while it's probably not something that the average citizen even thinks about - well, everyone associated with the Royalty gets messages from people who have become interested in them - fan mail and hate mail, as it were. One recurring theme in Max's friendly missives is that 'they' can tell how much he misses his lost Earthly love, and that he should 'go and bring her back as soon as he can.'"

"Oh," Liz muttered, surprised again. "So anybody who's interested knows that I exist. That Max had someone he loved back on Earth, if not any of the personal details about me."

"Yes," Rayde agreed. "A few of the personal details got out - all of them because Max drank too much cider at Michael and Maria's wedding and started expounding at length on your virtues - forgetting that there were journalists who had been invited to the festivities."

"Okay. Don't tell me all the gory details," Liz decided. "If it's alright, I'd like to get dressed for the reception and make my entrance now."

"Well, certainly," Rayde agreed. "You have a suitable costume?"

"Yes, Ava helped me organize the outfit," Liz said, waving a hand dramatically. "I've got as much power with clothing as she has now, but I haven't learned all the skills."

"Very well. I'll see you out there." Rayde nodded respectfully, and after a moment Liz clued in and pushed the door open button for her again - apparently Rayde wouldn't presume to do that herself in Max and Liz's cabin, even if Liz had indicated that she wanted Rayde to go.

Once Rayde swung the door closed behind her, Liz sighed and pulled out the little blue dress that she was planning to put on.

#

When Liz made her entrance into the lounge, several people were crowding around Alex, who had a long flat stick across his lap and was holding one end of it in his left hand in a particular way that struck Liz as familiar, though she couldn't immediately identify why. It wasn't until Alex 'strummed' his hand across his lap and a musical chord emerged that she made the connection - the stick was some alien equivalent to a guitar.

A guitar without a sound box, tuning pegs, or apparently strings, as far as Liz could tell. Oh well. "What's on the programme for tonight?"

"Our special guest performer is still making up his mind," Maria explained, stepping over and offering Liz a hug. "Thanks for coming - not that I thought you'd miss it, but I think that's the right thing to say anyway."

"Yeah, I suppose so," Liz agreed, and then nodded at Alex's instrument, which he seemed to still be getting the hang of. "Did you supply the axe? I know that wasn't something that Alex brought up from his own room."

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." Maria turned back to the others, leaving her arm draped around Liz's shoulders, and beamed. "I actually made a decent acoustic guitar back on Antar, with Michael's help, but that's pretty bulky and you might have noticed that we don't have much luggage space here on board. The electronic guitar is much more compact - it's touch-sensitive on the fingering board, and detects a strumming motion down at the other end with a kind of infrared technology."

"Cool," Liz decided. "Is this a kind of instrument they already had, or did you get it custom made to mimic a guitar?"

"Built to design, pretty much. All of the technology is common enough in musical instruments, over there, but they hadn't ever been arranged in that layout."

"Okay, I've decided on my first number, in honour of the bride and groom," Alex said. "It's a little bittersweet - or maybe open to either a happy or sad ending, but it does remind me of the two of you." He started to **play** a sweet put slightly haunting line on the guitar, only for a few measures, then inhaled and Liz thought that he was about to sing. Instead, though, he just vocalized without words for another little few bars, and _then_ started with the words.

"His heart was tougher than a piece of leather.

Had a will carved out of stone..."

Maria chuckled and rolled her eyes at this point. Michael shook his head, but he was smiling and stepped close to Maria, reaching out to hold her, and everybody else around reacted with varying levels of amusement or appreciation.

"He was a stallion who had thrown every rider.

No woman could seem to hang on.

He had always been a fortress

With walls to high to climb.

But then again - **He'd never seen Julie cry.**"

Liz shivered slightly at the feeling that Alex put into that last phrase, as Alex paused in the singing slightly, keeping the accompaniment going until the second verse.

"He wasn't looking for a woman.

He was racing with the wind.

But he kind of took to Julie,

'Cause she kept up with him.

Thought he'd outrun her like the others,

Leave her somewhere down the line.

But then again, he'd never seen Julie cry."

Somehow, seized by some kind of musical intuition that Liz wasn't able to understand herself, Maria and Ava started to hum along as Alex launched energetically into the chorus:

"He never thought that love would hit him,

Like a train coming out of the dark!

He never thought a friend would hand him

The keys to his own heart.

He was like a raging river,

One that's just too rough to ride.

But then again, he'd never seen Julie cry.

But then again, he'd never seen Julie cry."

Ava stopped following along, but Maria moved on to a bit of background vocalizing of her own as Alex swung into the next verse, keeping some of the energy he'd managed to build up.

"Oh, how he wanted just to hold her,

And wipe away her tears.

But she turned him a **cold shoulder**,

Said, 'I've tried loving you for years.'"

Liz started to shift nervously, absorbing what Alex had said about the sad side to this song. However much it might fit the rocky beginning to Michael and Maria's relationship, in a way it didn't seem appropriate for the celebration of their marriage. But maybe she shouldn't judge it until the end - and if everybody else was enjoying it as a song, why did Liz have to worry about bad omens?

"He didn't know that it was over.

He thought he could make it right,

But then again, he'd never seen Julie cry."

Now, with the repeat of the chorus, it took no musical intuition at all to follow along, just a decent memory for the words and the melody, and several of them joined in to a greater or lesser extent:

"He never thought that love would hit him,

Like a train coming out of the dark!

He never thought a friend would hand him back

The keys to his own heart.

He was like a raging river,

Oh, one that's just too rough to ride.

But then again, (then again,) he'd never seen Julie cry.

Oh, but then again, (then again,) he'd never seen Julie cry.

Ooh, until then, he'd never seen Julie cry."

"Yeah, that was alright," Michael said, after the silence had settled for just a short moment, "but how about a happier one next?"

"Maybe in a bit," Alex said, putting the 'air guitar' aside next to his chair. "There's sweets for now, aren't there?"

"Oh, come on, they'll keep," Ava tried, but Isabel showed some solidarity with her boyfriend and went through the double doorway into the Royal mess and brought back a tray of cupcakes. Liz took the hint and went on a run herself, bringing over a pitcher of the sweet and berry-ish punch that the Antarians seemed to like a lot, and a giant donut-like pastry that had been cut into slices.

Before anybody did any more songs, Alex insisted that they see the pictures and video of the wedding, and everybody who hadn't been there or already seen this agreed that it was a good time. Michael came in for some good-natured teasing when his friends saw the ancestral outfit that cousin Kelim had provided for him and insisted that he wear to keep up the family tradition - it included a skirt-like bottom piece... 'Exactly like a Scottish kilt, except not plaid coloured,' Michael insisted as loudly and firmly as he could - and a sort of burnished iron breastplate. Maria's wedding dress, on the other hand, was mostly admired even though it was exotic and unusual by Earth standards - maybe because of that, especially in the opinion of the other girls. (Tess hadn't expressed that much opinion, but then, both outfits were old news to her, and Max.)

Maria took a turn on the air guitar herself, singing "Thank you" by Dido for Michael, which got everybody into a discussion of the melody of 'Here with me' and where it was so familiar to all of them from. Alex took another turn as well, with a rowdy little twang number called 'Hard lovin' woman,' and substituting the names of 'Michael and Mari' for the ones in the original lyrics. That was a big hit, even though it introduced Mari's father as the major obstacle to the young lovers, and her mom being more supportive, which didn't entirely seem to fit.

Swander, who Liz had started to think of as the 'rough and tumble, man at arms, Jayne Cobb' of the alien crew, also took the guitar, though he didn't sing, just played a pretty instrumental theme, that the four couples danced to, while Tess and Serena sat by the wall and glared in frustration at each other. (Eleeron offered to partner each of them, going to his shipmate Tess first, but neither girl took him up on that offer.)

"Alright, come gather round the table," Max called to everybody after what Liz counted as the third dance, though it was sometimes hard to mark where one of Swander's tunes ended and another began. "Party can't last much longer, we need to be rested for battle tomorrow..."

"Boo, hiss," Maria called out, but she let Michael draw her towards one of the tables.

"Yes. Now - I know that some of you have - well, have not exactly had much time to shop for wedding presents for the happy couple - so I thought that this old Antarian tradition I ran across might be a good way to end the evening. Instead of a physical gift, each of us go around the table and offer a wish or a toast to the happy couple, as our tribute. You can take some time to make your decision, within reason..."

"See above re: we can't stay up for much longer," Liz put in, and Max nodded gravely.

"Yeah. And if you like, you can start a discussion or ask questions to help give you ideas." He looked around at the group. "Okay, since I'm right here beside the groom, and it was my bright idea, do I have to start?"

"Why wouldn't you have to?" Tess put in with a little laugh, and there were murmurs of agreement from others.

"And no recycling material from your toast at the original wedding reception," Maria added with a little giggle.

"Now that's just being difficult," Max shot back. Maria shrugged. "Okay. Michael, Maria, on this night, when we have come together to commemorate the joining of your lives into a single family, I - I wish you all the best luck and patience with your children - regarding Danyel and the other babies that I know you hope to bring into the Galaxy together, when there's a better medical prognosis for them. It's been a great trial for both of you, but I seriously believe that you're nearly at the end of your long road, and that - that conviction and hope is the gift that I hope to convey to you tonight."

"Wow, Maxwell," Michael muttered. "Way to bring up an awkward subject in the middle of a great party." But he was smiling, obviously touched by the sweet side of what Max had said.

"Yeah, but thanks for the silver lining," Maria agreed. "Do - have all of you heard about Danyel by now?" She was looking over particularly at Ava and Kyle."

"Umm, yeah," Kyle muttered.

"Liz spilled the beans," Ava offered, her voice subdued but cheerful. "Hope you don't mind."

"No, that's okay, thanks."

"I haven't heard the deal," Serena put in, once again sounding grouchy about being left out. "Gather that it's a kid - you finally had a son, huh? So what's the sitch? Did you have to leave him behind because he couldn't handle the warp drive or something?"

"It's more than that, Serena," Liz said softly. "Danyel is - growing up inside a pod, like the one you were in."

"Oh." This seemed to have some impact on the New Yorker girl. "Hey, sorry, I didn't mean to make light of anything..."

"It's okay," Michael told her, a little dismissively. "Well, Max has taken his turn, so I guess that puts you on the hot seat, Parker."

"Gee thanks," Liz said. Automatically she fingered the chain around her neck, and for a moment she couldn't remember what it meant or why she was wearing it. Then with a bit of a look down, she remembered Max's engagement token to her, and the fact that she still had to get something for him, and smiled. "Okay, well, I don't have anything offhand, so I guess that I'll take the option about asking questions. Would it be cheating to ask the happy couple if there's anything that they're wishing for themselves, that I can join in on?"

There was a silence. "I don't mind," Max put in, and Michael shook his head as well. Maria seemed to be struggling with a fit of the giggles again. (Liz wondered exactly what she'd been drinking, if anything besides the Rynec, which was supposed to be guaranteed non-intoxicating for anyone human, Antarian, and in-between.)

"Alright, umm..." Liz wondered if she could simply stipulate that the question was put, and then decided that she'd probably better make it better than that. "Michael, Maria - is there anything missing in your life back on Antar - aside from kids that you can hold close?"

"Some of our best friends," Michael declared immediately. "But I suspect that my best friend of all is already taking care of that." He shot a meaningful look over at Michael."

"And besides that..." Maria started, but Liz held up a hand to take care of that.

"No, you keep the 'besides' for now, someone else can ask you or not," Liz decided. "I'll take this one, anyway." She tapped her glass with a fingernail - and it absolutely failed to make any kind of a sound. Alex, Kyle, Maria, and Serena all started laughing heartily. Liz shrugged. "Friends, both old and new, are one of the best things in life. I'm pleased that Maria has been one of my oldest and best friends for most of my life, and there's been an empty space in my heart lately with a familiar shape because she wasn't really part of my day-to-day life. Michael - I haven't known you for as long, but you've been a good friend to me too - ever since that night late in the Crashdown when you discretely returned my stolen journal to me."

"Hey!" Michael interrupted. "You promised me you'd never tell anyone who took it."

"She didn't actually," Max pointed out, with a stern look at Michael. "Just that you returned it, which isn't the same thing. However, your response would tend to incriminate you, soldier."

Liz just grinned a big grin and continued with her toast. "So my blessing for you tonight would be this - may your lives be surrounded by those of friends, both old and new." She shot a look of her own at Isabel and Alex before stopping herself - but that was Max's business to sort out in the end, really. "Salud!"

"Cheers," Michael replied, and they all drank.

And the ritual proceeded on from there. Isabel made a bit of a joke out of her turn, telling embarrassing stories about both significant parties under the excuse of 'giving' Maria the gift of truth about her husband, and vice-versa, (though her store of dirt on Maria was a bit less voluminous.) Liz was slightly worried that one of the tidbits would rise beyond the level of humour and actually spark bad feelings, but nothing of the sort seemed to happen. Tess wished Michael success with the democratic Senate reforms that apparently he'd been spending a lot of time at over the past year, and Maria much happiness with her next musical project. Kyle recited a Buddhist marriage blessing that he had apparently memorized in Thai, (no-one could get him to admit exactly why he'd gone to the effort,) and Alex finally called on Maria to give the answer that she'd been squirming to get out ever since Liz had cut her off - so he ended up wishing that the two of them could get a little home of their own out in the Antarian country, not far from the capital city limits.

Ava went off on a big thing about communication and taking turns giving and receiving, and wished that their relationship would be happy and healthy for all of the days of their lives, and finally everybody turned to Serena, who was sitting closest to Maria.

"Well, why dance around it?" Serena muttered. "I hope that you both get through the big fight tomorrow without a scratch on you - and that none of the rest of us bite it, too, because that would probably make Maria sad - unless maybe it's me, I guess."

"Very touching," Michael put in. "Thanks."

"Well, yeah, at least she's trying," Liz put in, not quite sure why she was making the effort, if it wasn't what Future Max had told her about 'Serena', and the growing suspicion that he had actually been talking about Lonnie. (That conversation had taken place before she'd even met Lonnie, or any of the New York hybrids, after all.) "I realize that - well, Serena still doesn't quite fit in with us yet, but maybe that's because none of us have really been eager to let her in - and I know that applies to me too. Maybe we should all try to stop with the little jabs and sarcastic remarks, and see what happens next."

"You can take away my sarcasm when you rip it away from my dying brain," Kyle put in. "Or something like that. But anger only begets more anger, and even a little hatred can lead to bigger hatreds. I'm good with limiting myself to strictly friendly sarcasm."

"I guess that's somewhere to start, yeah," Isabel agreed with a sigh. "I'll make eye contact if you will, Serena."

"Just with you, or with everyone?" Serena shot back, laughing at herself.

"Alright, well, now that the peace treaty has been negotiated, it's that time of the evening," Max put in. "You don't have to go back to your cabins, but you can't stay here." He paused. "Well, except for Serena, who's using the cot in the lounge."

"Right," Liz said, and she drew Max expertly out of the lounge before he could start micro-managing the cleanup or anything else.

When they got to Max's cabin, Liz turned to face Max and bent his head down for a kiss that she set to 'heavy stun.' For the most part that worked, but he did still have enough of his wits to ask, "What exactly are you up to, love of my life?"

"Everything I can get of you, my darling my dear," Liz breathed back, sucking on Max's neck and ripping his shirt open as quickly as she could. "I know - I mean, I remember everything you told me last night, the good reasons to wait, but - but as Serena not-so-subtly pointed out, we're both putting our lives in danger tomorrow in a bid to save the world, right?" Max groaned an uh-huh, pulling her petite body close to him by instinct, which actually interfered with Liz's efforts to strip both of them out of their clothing, but she went along with it for a moment. "So, I want to do this tonight. To - to be with you, to make love for the first time - and possibly a second and third, if circumstances lead us that way. I need that much - in case the worst happens, and you die on me, or I slip away from you."

Max smiled at her, but his face was troubled, (as well as aroused.) "I... I can appreciate the sentiment of that, but - but there's the mating instinct to think of. Neither of us have - have prepared our minds for this, and - and I don't even have - normal birth control."

That threw a bit of metaphorical cold water in Liz's face. Already she could feel the tug of slightly irrational lust pulling at her mind and body, and there was even a part of her that was saying, "So what if we don't use birth control? Is that really such a big deal?"

But it **was**, she knew that much. Whatever difficulties Michael and Maria had encountered in trying to deliver a healthy baby would be just as likely to affect herself and Max, Liz thought that much stood to reason. A laboratory-engineered hybrid, and a mother born human and 'changed' to be partly alien through her association with her destined mate. Everything was parallel between them, now. And Liz did not want to lightly put herself into Maria's situation, where the only way to save the life of her unborn child would be to lock the tiny, growing baby into a sealed pod for years.

She shook her head and tried to concentrate. "That mating instinct thing - it can't force us to make a mistake if we're being very careful, right? We could - could be together safely, maybe just once, if we had a condom to use."

"Neither of us wants to give up on it now, and you think we can stop after doing it once?" Max insisted. "The urge is going to be stronger then..."

"I'm not ruled by my urges," Liz insisted. "I want to be with you because that's what my head and my heart are telling me, not my glands."

"Okay, then do you _have_ a condom?" Max asked.

"Well - no," Liz admitted. She had had no indication that Max would be coming into her life, yesterday, and even if she wasn't sure how long she might have to wait for him, she hadn't had any interest at all in being with any other guy. "But I know that I have friends here on the ship who would have packed some extras."

"But M..." Max trailed off, realizing where she was going. It probably didn't matter to him if she was talking about Isabel and Alex, or Ava and Kyle - Liz knew that both couples were on the mental birth control regimen, and also being doubly careful in terms of the conventional contraceptive methods available. "Okay, do what you have to do," he said, defeated by the force of her insistence - and possibly his own inner drives.

Liz carefully made sure that she was still decent - she hadn't done much with the dress so far - and then turned back to Max. "What about Michael and Maria? You were about to say something about them, right?"

"Umm - they've had contraceptive implants put in, two-year crystals. It's a common thing back there - because there's really nothing that the instinct can do to sabotage it - it's not strong enough to make somebody actually dig into their own flesh and tear something out."

"So that sort of thing is available - and you knew you were coming here to see me - but you didn't get one, just in case?" Liz teased him, grinning. "Would have been a good idea, I think, even if you weren't sure what kind of reception you were going to get."

And then she slipped out, only letting the wall swing open enough to let her pass, trying to minimize the chance of anybody else passing by seeing Max en dishabille.


	6. Chapter 6

Liz drifted back to awareness, feeling perfectly content and happy. A few things became clear. She was lying on Max's bunk, in his arms, both of them completely nude, with a faint blue light still shining in his cabin. And Antarian sex definitely lived up to all of the 'glowing' exaltations that Maria had told her, during the start of that last summer that they had all spent in Roswell together. Liz had experienced all of it - the unusual but pleasant sensation of what Max was experiencing during the foreplay, the incredibly intense build-up of physical pleasure, magnified and remagnified, during the act of love itself, the tantalizing sensation of contact with the outer layers of his soul just at the climax, and a sort of out-of-body experience, that faded into sleep.

True to what Maria, and Max, had each described in their turn, Liz did feel the strong compulsion to jump Max's bones again, (or perhaps just the one bone,) but firmly she squelched that impulse, determined deep down to prove that her willpower was stronger than any instinct. She had borrowed more than just the one prophylactic from Ava and Kyle, but rationally they **did** need to spend the night sleeping and not indulging their passions, for the sake of the morrow. Considerately she pulled the sheath off of Max, examining it in her hand for a short, fascinated moment, and then putting it down into the cabin's waste disposal slot. Her powers were able to deal with the traces of the loss of her virginity on the dark bed sheets, but not the effects on herself - it didn't hurt so bad, but felt like an aching sore. Max would probably be able to deal with that, just like he'd fixed up her other bruises and bumps, if she reminded him in the morning. Putting out the lights, she crawled back into the bunk next to Max, pressing herself close to him.

The passion to repeat their achievement became stronger with the contact, but it was easy for Liz to not act on it. What was **not** easy, though, was getting to sleep while that urge was nagging at her.

There was no lighted time display in the bunk, but Liz could feel the minutes ticking by - not quite sure at what rate, but they were passing. As sleep refused to come, Liz thought about Max's 'Torrie-teng' and how easy it had been to drift into dreamland staring at those shifting lights and colors. He'd said that it was 'easy', but she hadn't thought to ask how she could make one herself, and he hadn't volunteered tips. She could shake him, wake him up to ask - but even though Max would be quickly back to sleep, it would be disrupting his sleep pattern, and somehow Liz couldn't bring herself to do that, on this night in particular.

But she had to do something, and not just lay here and wait here for sleep to come. Ask the food slot computer for a sleep drug? It might not have any - or not any suitable for humans. The concept might be foreign to the Antarians, if Torrie-tengs were in popular use. Maybe she could slip out and ask anybody who was awake. One of the Antarians, at least, would be standing watch through the night, surely? But she would have to put on some clothes in the dark, or turn the light back on without getting it bright enough to disturb Max, and...

As she discarded the complications of that possibility, a very simple alternative occurred to Liz. She had heard, from several of her friends, how the meditation patterns for the mental birth control regimen went, or how they started, at least. She hadn't had any reason to pursue them, but she was sure that she could lead herself through the first few stages. Meditation was a way of relaxing, and if she managed to get this particular meditation right, it would reduce the urges she was feeling, right? That, and feeling relaxed enough, should be enough to get her back to sleep?

Before starting, Liz reluctantly made one minor sacrifice to squeeze the odds in her favour - she slid sideways enough on the bunk that she wasn't actually in contact with Max, though she could still hear him, and feel the warmth of his body radiating faintly onto her own skin.

It took Liz quite a while, and several repetitions of the mental concentration patterns, which she kept getting in the wrong order and compromising their effectiveness - but she did get back to sleep. Even after she rolled back next to Max and drifted back up as far as a snooze a few times, that wasn't enough to wake her back up entirely, and she started to dream again.

#

Michael and Rayde woke them up, actually overriding the door lock somehow and shouting into the cabin. Both of them must have noticed the bareness of the Royal couple, but it didn't seem to dissuade them any. As soon as Max realized what was going on, he was rushing to climb into his battle suit and head out to yell at a few other poor sleeping souls. On his way out the door, he turned back to inform Liz in a very loud and stentorian voice that there would be no breakfast in bed that day, or indeed anywhere in the ship. Everybody was to assemble outside within five minutes.

It wasn't really five minutes, though Liz did actually try her business, skipping the water shower and simply cleaning up as best she could with her powers, then slipping back into her own suit, (despite all the bad associations she had of it from the day before.) She, Maria, and Tess were all fairly close to the deadline, but by the time Kyle and Serena had turned out, it was more like fifteen minutes, and Liz actually felt either pissed or envious that they had taken their time while she'd been outside standing at attention like an idiot. Max led them off in formation towards one of the marked Cavern openings, barely visible in the faintest traces of twilight - most of the couples could stay next to each other, but since Max was in the lead, Liz ended up next to Tess. Then, when they got close, Tess stepped off to the side, concentrating on the guard, hiding all of them from him, both visually and masking the sounds of their passages.

After hiking in near-darkness through the underground chambers for another few minutes, (lit only by a few faintly glowing hands of her neighbours,) and making at least one tricky descent through a steep channel with uneven footing, Max had them gather around in a circle on a reasonably flat cave floor, and brought out a little blue rod on a three-foot mounting, which glowed in a slightly more satisfying and bright way than the moving hands. Michael and Maria started passing around little food bars and ovoid-cross-section tubes of water and Rynec.

"Okay, this is where we wait," Max pointed out. "We're off the regular tour path, and Tess and Rayde believe that they've found the standard watch schedule, so we'll find somewhere to hide nearby when the security guards do their sweep. I find it hard to believe that they search every possible nook and cranny in a place like this."

"Wait for what, Max?" Kyle asked. "The alien monster to come looking for us? I thought you were going to set out some kind of bait for it, and then we'd spring our trap."

"We **are** the bait, Valenti," Michael pointed out. "The monster's pretty stupid, or it should be yet, as far as anything we've figured out. There's plenty of tasty stuff around this circle, and even those of us who have powers, it should be able to sense that energy as something that it can draw on to help feed itself. As long as we don't act like hunters out to catch or kill it, it won't recognize us as a threat yet."

"Oh, okay," Liz said. "Is that why the Rayde and the other crew have kept their distance? Would the creature sense them differently?"

"They're not here?" Isabel said, looking around with a bit of surprise. "Whoops, I hadn't noticed."

Serena snorted, and then cut it off halfway. "Sorry, didn't mean to - well, you know." Isabel nodded, probably about as gracefully as she could manage to.

"Yeah, that's right, Liz," Tess put in. "We're not sure, but it seems like the species may have learned to recognize Antarians as a threat, and the products of Antarian technology, like the husks that Swander and Eleeron use now that we've landed. Those of us who are hybrids are probably a bit confusing to it - partly a threat and partly food - but I'm betting that it's hungry enough that it'll go for us."

"And if not?" Alex had to ask. "Do the six of you back off too, and leave just four human-born suckers as the bait?"

"Maybe - we'll have to be very careful to make sure that you won't be at risk if we do that," Max admitted. "Hopefully we won't need to worry about it. I'm willing to wait here together for a long while, tempting the thing."

"Okay." Liz took a big bite of her bar, letting it crunch between her teeth. "Well, we'd better eat up, and fatten ourselves so we smell extra tasty."

"Ehh, don't remind me that you never put on weight in the wrong places, Liz," Isabel complained.

#

They stayed there for hours, mostly all sitting in the same place, though every so often somebody got up and walked a full lap or three around the circle in order to stretch their legs. Since everybody was together, and it was in some respects a more convenient way to chat than inside the ship, this chance was taken to tell many more stories about the time that the two main groups had been separated - experiences of Max, Michael, Maria, and Tess on Antar, (and a visit that Max had taken to Rahlicx, to meet Larek in person.) Those who had stayed behind in Roswell and then moved to Las Cruces as a group had their own tales and experiences, though many of them seemed less dramatic, and even Serena was drawn out to speak somewhat of her experiences since last meeting any of the others in New York City.

Kyle and Ava were taking turns speaking of a frosh night party that they had gone to the previous fall, (when they'd both been sophomores, not frosh,) when Michael growled, got up, and stepped into the circle, gesturing for attention. Kyle kept rambling on, even though he saw Michael, until Ava tugged hard enough on his arm to get him to quiet down. "Sorry, Valenti, you can resume that thrilling tale of campus raves later, but I've had just about enough of the story telling, and I'm about to drift off in here. It'll be no good if we all get like that when the monster makes its appearance."

"It **wasn't** a rave," Kyle replied sourly. "And what else did you have in mind?"

"Yeah, Michael," Isabel chimed in. "I don't think that I'm about to lose attention anytime soon - in fact, well, I'm not really paying that much attention to listening to you guys." Kyle made a little yelp of protest. "Well, come on, most of these stories I've heard before, and we _do_ have a more important reason why we're here."

"Okay," Michael said. "But how about a little game, which will let us move around and challenge our minds? Nothing that should be too engrossing that we won't notice the beast."

"Any idea what sort of game would fit those criteria?" Serena asked, standing up in her place.

"Chess," Max said, with a laugh, and he waved beyond the circle. A glowing checkerboard pattern appeared on the rocky ground, every other square glowing with a very faint red light, just enough to be made out. "With the ten of us taking the place of a few of the chess pieces - not all of them, because there aren't enough of us. All players on a team can confer, with the team captain, the king, having final say. Any personified 'piece' who gets captures may take the place of another piece, as long as there are any left. Michael, do you want to be one of the captains? You thought of playing a game."

"No, your majesty," Michael laughed. "I'll cede that honour."

"Kyle should be a captain too," Ava pointed out loyally. "After he got interrupted and all."

"Okay," Liz decided. "Max is the white king, and Kyle is the black king. Black can pick teammates first, since white plays first. Sound good?" Nobody objected.

"Alright..." Kyle stood up and struck his best captainly pose. "I'll pick Ava, my advocate."

"What piece will you start as, Ava?" Alex asked, getting into it. "Everybody should have to pick as they're called on."

"What are we going to use as the other pieces?" Tess interrupted.

"There are enough rocks around, and we can reshape them a bit," Ava suggested. "I'll be the black queen, of course."

There weren't many surprises to the selection of pieces. Max chose Liz, who was delighted to be his white queen, and then Kyle considered deeply, and appeared to go for brains as well as friendship, picking Alex, who became the black king's knight. Cued in by that, Max chose Isabel, splitting the couple up, but Isabel took her place as the white queen's bishop happily enough. Kyle picked Maria, who decided that she would start as the black king's pawn, and Max tapped Michael, who went in as the white king's knight. Tess went to Kyle's side, as the black king's bishop, and Serena was the last to be picked, going in as the white queen's rook. Then everybody with powers was kept busy for a while shaping chess pieces out of nearby rocks that were longer than a foot and a half at their widest point.

"Probably after all this trouble, we'll be interrupted by the battle just at the most interesting part of the midgame," Isabel grumbled. But everybody took their places, and Max left his spot long enough to move the pawn in front of him two spaces, starting the action. After a short consultation with Kyle, Maria stepped out to meet and block it.

The opening game played itself out fairly simply. Maria was the first to get captured, by the white queen's pawn, and she took the place of the black queen's knight, which was already in position to capture the pawn. Thus she avenged her own capture. Ava actually screamed a little at Kyle when she realized that he was manoeuvring her into a situation where she would have to either capture Liz or be captured by her, and either way the attacking queen would be captured in her turn. Liz wasn't really that happy about the situation either - being the queen, one of the most powerful pieces on the board, was fun - but it didn't make sense for either side to change its strategy just to placate the two girls, and backing out of the exchange would let Kyle seize the initiative and send Ava onto the offensive. Presumably the black strategist thought the same about backing Ava away. So the two friends went through with their suicide pack, Liz capturing Ava and being captured in turn by Alex. Ava chose to become the black king's rook, while Liz went over her choices and joined Isabel as a bishop.

The midgame proceeded. Liz tried her best to help Max with the overall strategy of the game, but found it hard to properly visualize the action from inside the 'board', as opposed to looking down onto it in the usual way. The usual dance of attack and counterattack proceeded, occasionally enlivened by such manoeuvres as pins, forks, and skewers, and discovered attacks, sacrifices and double checks. Despite the best efforts of defence on both sides, both Max and Kyle got checked a few times early on, and had to scramble for cover one square per move. White did get an advantage of a bishop for a pawn, but none of them could stand long against Alex's inventive brain, and as the midgame moved towards its end, that turned into a decisive points advantage for Black, though Liz still thought White had a fairly strong strategic position.

For a long time she was in the same corner of the board as Alex, only a few spaces away, and he took great delight in calling off the examples of undermining, overloading, interference, Zugzwang, and Zwischenzug, thinking that she'd appreciate them in a way that the rest of his friends wouldn't. (Liz would have been more appreciative if she'd been actually able to use the concepts to White team's advantage, but she'd never really been that sharp at chess, which she'd never regretted until today.)

For Liz, the true endgame started when Max couldn't save her bishop self from being captured by the enemy king himself, and her only choice to remain in the action was a lowly white pawn. After a lot of careful dancing around, there was an exchange of pawns, and one more capture, which left each side with only four pieces - Michael and Alex being the ones stranded on the side of the board. White was, by this point, essentially down by a rook to a pawn - but Liz was on the sixth rank, and thus threatening to become a queen once again. Serena was also a pawn, on the leftmost file and the fifth rank, and Isabel was still a bishop. On the other side, Tess was the rook, Maria a knight, and Ava a pawn, on black's fifth rank.

"I think that we're all hungry, and there's a good lunch staying warm in the ship," Max announced after Tess made a move. "Alex, why don't you go back and fetch it, while we finish our last stand? Your handprint should open the airlock door. I took care of that yesterday after the training, yeah?"

"Hey, why don't you send Michael back?" Kyle countered. "Even if he's not on the board, Alex can still consult on strategy, there's nothing in the rules against that. You just think you might have a chance if our brightest chess mind isn't in the mix for a little while."

"No," Max said, with that sort of 'dangerously calm' attitude that he had been able to manage, occasionally, even as a sixteen year old. "You're his captain, if it's your call that Alex doesn't go until the chess game is over, then he stays. But even before we came here, I had decided that when the time came to get lunch, Alex would be the one to go. I thought that since he wasn't needed on the board, he could head off now and we could all eat a little earlier. That's all it is. And frankly -" Here Max looked around at the board. "I'm not really thinking that we have a chance even without Alex."

"Why Alex, Max?" Isabel asked him, sounding a little offended that Max was 'picking on' her man. "Why not someone who can..." She trailed off at that point.

"I'm not worried that anybody leaving for the surface will be attacked by the creature," Max said softly. "Our friends will watch out for Alex while he's still in the caves. But - but while we have to be down one person right here - I don't want it to be someone who can pull their weight in the fight. No offense, Alex."

"Umm, no, that's okay," Alex said, looking around. "I don't mind going. You can capture Liz in four moves if Maria forks Isabel and Max first. Then go for the even exchange on threes."

"I'm still not sure," Kyle said, and then seemed to sense that even his teammates seemed to be more interested in food than the final outcome of the game. "Okay, please yourself, Whitman. It's on you if we manage to muff it after all."

"How is it my fault?" Alex asked him

"You remember where to find the door when the ship's cloaked, right Alex?" Liz asked. It wasn't really a cloaking device, but the ship's ability to look like a nearly-natural rock formation when it was landed had surprised Liz the first time she saw the effect in action.

"Yeah, it's not hard to find it," Alex assured her, and headed off. Kyle shrugged and directed Maria to move according to Alex's hint, and surely enough, no defence that they could mount would protect Liz from being captured by Tess' rook. It took much longer before Kyle could arrange for Maria to capture Isabel, and be captured by Max in her turn. Isabel had taken Ava off the board in the meantime. Then as Serena made her last-ditch bid to become a Queen herself, Tess caught her on the seventh rank, and it was down to king and rook versus king - certain loss for white.

"I don't really feel like being pinned up against the wall," Max pointed out to Kyle and Tess. "Can I just resign gracefully at this point?"

"Oh, come on, let them see if they can checkmate you before Alex gets here with the food," Ava said. "I've always loved king and rook versus king, so elegant if you do it right."

As it turned out, they hadn't quite managed to win the game by the time Alex returned with the two heavy picnic baskets, but the end was close enough that he didn't mind playing it out, letting Tess once again move the line while Kyle blocked him from crossing over into open territory, forcing him back against the side of the 'board.' Max dodged off to the side, and Kyle retreated, then advanced at a diagonal in his turn, preparing to lay down the opposition.

"If the beast hasn't shown up by this evening, do we have to camp out here and keep watch?" Kyle asked as they gathered around the food. By this time, everyone was used to the dim glow of the lighting they were using inside the cave - except Alex, whose night vision had been ruined by his quick trip into the sunlight. Liz noticed a container of an Antarian hand food that they'd had for the engagement party, something a bit like a spicy lamb strip breaded in banana batter - she swiped two 'fingers' and looked around to see if anybody else was wanting some.

"Some of us should, yes, if it comes to that, and I hope it won't," Max admitted. "Along the lines that I mentioned earlier - you, Liz, Maria, and Alex." He dug into the 'cold' section of one metal basket and produced long thin drink containers for himself and Liz.

"Ooh," Isabel said, not sounding thrilled about the possibility of being separated from Alex in this emergency. Liz didn't really blame her - after sleeping next to Max for two nights, she didn't really want to be apart from him, but...

"_In-the-hell-coming_!" Michael suddenly bellowed. "One cavern away and closing fast! Was **every damn body** so frackin' hungry that they forgot to _keep a sense open_?"

"No time to point a finger," Max said, tossing his food and drink back in the direction of the baskets casually. "Open horseshoe formation, everybody, and be careful. It'll want to sneak up behind us, not walk into the pen."

"Which _direction_ is it coming from, Michael?" Kyle asked in frustration. He had almost no sensitive powers himself, and knowing the angle of approach of the enemy would be important for pointing the open end of the 'horseshoe' in the right direction - among other preparations. Ava pointed off towards the dimmer end of the cave, where Liz hadn't realized that there was a tunnel opening before, and couldn't be completely sure that she could see one at that moment or if she was just imagining it.

They spread out into the open, sparse line as the manoeuvre had been rehearsed the day before, after power practice. Liz was between Max on one side, and Serena on the other - the specific order hadn't been practiced, and in this emergency it just sort of developed from the positions each person had been in at the moment Michael yelled his warning. To her surprise, Liz realized that she was still holding one of the banana pork fingers, and couldn't resist taking a bite out of it and chewing. Serena, Max, and Michael all turned their heads slightly to shoot sidelong glares at her, and regretfully she tossed the rest of the treat out onto the cavern floor in front of her, in the direction of the picnic baskets. She didn't spit out what she already had in her mouth, though.

There was a bit of movement out in the dimness, and then more, and Liz realized that The Beast had entered their cave. It was hard to make out its shape in the dim light, but Max had certainly been right in guessing that it had tentacles. There was something else nagging at the edge of her brain, and cued in by something Tess had mentioned, Liz spent a moment trying to identify that faint unfamiliar presence, wondering if the Beast could interfere with her mind. But the sensation wasn't _that_ unfamiliar - somebody had set up a faint mental link between the nine of them, possibly a mostly subconscious connection, (which suggested Isabel?) in order to better co-ordinate.

Wait a second - nine? Hadn't there been ten of them? Scanning around the horseshoe, Liz only saw nine human figures in their spandex battle armour - Alex was missing. Had he been - no, as soon as she had formulated the thought she was aware of Isabel's reaction, the uncontrollable glimpse in the direction of the passage going back the other way - away from the monster, towards the surface and the three Antarians. He had gone to summon help, in case Rayde and her crew hadn't picked up what was going on already, and to stay well out of danger. Liz had to admit that she felt reassured about that...

...And there was movement, some kind of action, though it didn't seem to be actual violence yet - what had happened? In a moment, between her own observations and thoughts from the others, Liz had pieced it together. The Beast, becoming aware that it was being surrounded, had charged to break through the other side of the horseshoe, and Michael, Isabel, and Ava had grouped closely together, summoning a joined force field to ward it off. The nearest team members to them, including Maria and Kyle, were rushing close by to support them if necessary and help guard the spots in the formation that Michael and Ava had moved out of, and Serena and Tess were also in motion, working to close the horseshoe into an encircling loop. Liz caught Max's eye, and the two of them moved forward cautiously. She knew that the smaller the circle around the Beast was, the less space there was where it could try to escape between them - or overwhelm one person who couldn't be helped by his or her neighbours in time.

The creature - Liz could make out four of its long tentacles on the floor like feet and legs, and at least three waving in the air, around a body at least as big as a horse's, seemed to hesitate for a long moment, stunned by the impact of crashing into that tripled energy shield at full speed and uncertain about what was going on. Then it spun around, and Liz saw what must be the beast's head - a knobby sphere just a bit larger than a basketball, (a leaky basketball by the overall shape of it,) connected to the body by a long and wrinkled neck. There was nothing immediately like a nose, four or five very short antennae, and a long gashy slit showing about a dozen irregularly arranged, razor sharp protrusions when it was open. Liz was fascinated by it for an awful moment - and then she met the monster's eyes.

The two orbs were large, showing a uniform gray color, and yet there was somehow a pattern that Liz couldn't describe to them, nothing as simple as a human's or an animal's eye shape. She didn't have long to puzzle over that, for in mere seconds, this overwhelming, unquestionable sense of fear watched over - fear of this thing, of what it represented. Some of that fear was for her friends, for the prospect of seeing someone she cared about die that day, but the majority of the sensation was much more immediate, personal - primal. Liz panicked for her own life, and without even a sense of giving into that panic, she turned, breaking the formation, and fled as fast as she could.

She didn't hear Max call out her name, or Tess yelling at him to not run after her, not then. Liz wasn't aware of anything other than her flight, and the sensation that the Monster was right behind her, about to catch her and start taking interested bites out of her at its leisure. (The protective properties of the spandex suit didn't occur to her in the slightest, or even that this might be a good time to fetch out the gloves and hood to wear them as well.) She stumbled and nearly fell three times before it actually occurred to her that looking where she was going and watching her footing would help her get away faster.

It was around that point that she dimly sensed Max running after her, and somebody else, a feminine mind, but Liz couldn't pick out the identity. (Probably if Max wasn't so close to her heart and her soul, she wouldn't have been able to even recognize him.) It was somehow somewhat reassuring to her that she had friends nearby, but that didn't matter much. She found a tunnel opening in the cavern and rushed inside, the increasing darkness not slowing her flight down appreciably.

She wasn't sure how long she ran. There were a few more stumbles in the dark, and even one little tumble. She raced around turns and chose blindly at Y-forks and T-junctions, worrying that she might end up at a dead end, or go around a loop and find herself staring at the monster at the worst possible time, but that didn't happen. There was one larger cavern that she crossed at a dead run, not really knowing or caring just how open it was, and then back into another, tighter tunnel. After what seemed like a long time it widened up again, and then Liz felt herself running off and edge, her feet not landing where she'd expected them to. At first she assumed that it was just a drop of a foot or so, and she modified her stance to land accordingly...

By the time she realized that she'd fallen more than four feet and was still accelerating at the usual rate, a different kind of panic was setting in. She flailed for a moment before remembering what Raydeleen had taught her - looking up and reaching that way with her powers, 'grabbing' onto the cliff face with her powers and trying to use that solid rock to pull her back up. With a sinking feeling Liz observed that she was hardly even breaking her fall, that she wouldn't be able to levitate herself back up that way...

But she wasn't alone. A familiar head appeared over the edge of the precipice - familiar because of her sense of who was inside more than anything that her eyes were telling her. Max - and he was pulling her up in the same fashion that she was trying to haul herself - their two 'ropes' of invisible power latching onto each other and becoming just one, that each of them was pulling on from one side. Miraculously, Liz floated up, her outstretched hand coming closer to Max's, and then clasping it. Max seemed to collapse at that point and just lie on the rock surface, but Liz didn't need his active help by that point anymore, between some pushing with her powers against the rock, and just plain pulling using that grip as leverage, Liz was able to scramble to safety, and crawl across Max to the point of safety.

"Thanks so much, sweetie," she muttered, and when she didn't get a reply, Liz suddenly felt a pang of worry. Going back to Max, making the fingers of her left hand glow as a light source, it didn't take her too long to realize what was really wrong - Max must have hit his head on a sharp protrusion of rock when all of her weight came down on the power cord that he was pulling on - hard enough that he was bleeding profusely, and Liz didn't even dare check immediately on whether his skull was intact. He must have fought to cling to consciousness while she was in danger, running on adrenaline or whatever the Antarian biological equivalent was, continuing to pull her up. "Oh, god," Liz muttered, worried that that act of love might cost her beloved his life.

She would do anything that she had to to help him - but couldn't think of what the right thing to do was. Max himself, of course, was the only one with a true healing gift, and their quick training hadn't even covered uses of alien powers for quick field first aid. Eleeron was a field medic, and the ship's infirmary had some amazing tissue repair equipment... but Liz wasn't even sure if she could find her way back to the cavern that they had been in when the Beast had attacked - and was the battle still raging there, or had the monster escaped, ranging somewhere in the darkness between here and there. For the first time, Liz realized just what she had done, breaking formation at the first sign of danger and running without even being sure where she was going or how to get back there...

"Liz? Is that you?" Liz recognized the voice out of the darkness the way that she must have come, and lifted up her hand to shed a little light that way. With a soft 'oh' sound, Maria must have remembered her own powers, and made her own palm glow, illuminating her face from underneath. "I - I followed you and Max - don't think that anybody else ran with us."

"I started it all," Liz complained, her voice very near to a wail. "I'm an idiot and a coward, and I ruined all of Max's plans..."

"Don't talk like that," Maria said, stepping closer - and then stopping when she saw Max's blood - including a bit that had gotten on Liz's hands when she examined him. "I recognized that fear as artificial, even if you didn't - it's a power that the monster has, probably very useful for it. Not quite sure why it put the whammy on you first, maybe just because you made eye contact. Once you ran, it was easier for Max and I to give into fear, I'll admit that much. Now, come on, we've got to do what we can for Max?"

"And what - what's that?" Liz asked. "I... I'm not sure if I'm still under the fear 'whammy', but I can't really think clearly."

"You can patch flesh together and make artificial skin to stop the bleeding," Maria said, kneeling next to Max's body. "I can show you how; it'll go faster with both of us working on it. And then we need to get him to someone who can help more."

"And just how do we find help?" Liz asked. From the look on Maria's face, she wasn't sure about that part either, but wasn't about to let it stop her. Okay, Liz decided. First things first.

It was about as easy as Maria had said to deal with Max's bleeding head wound, and Liz couldn't help noticing as they worked that there was indeed a skull fracture - a small and hopefully not too serious one, and she did what she could to push the crack closed for now. She hoped that Max might wake up and be able to suggest some course of action, or even heal himself, but as they finished, he slipped into a deep, restful sleep from which she couldn't awaken him immediately.

"Okay." Liz sighed and tried to take stock of the situation. "We do need to get moving. One of us leads the way; the other lifts Max up and floats him in between us. We both keep lights on. Do you have any preference?"

"Umm - I don't know," Maria admitted. "Max is awfully heavy - and whoever's behind needs to keep a watch out for sneak attacks from that thing... but - how do we figure out where to go?"

"I've got an idea about that," Liz admitted. "I've got a sort of a directional sense on where the others are - maybe a mile a mile if we could go straight - but as much as I try to figure out a way to sense the right path through the tunnels, I can't..."

"I - I can, Liz!" Maria breathed, full of wonder at something that she had never expected to be able to accomplish. "I can sense something like a rescue line; it'll lead us both back to Michael if we follow it."

Liz considered that. "Then I guess you're leading the way?"

Maria hesitated, then faced the unknown darkness of the tunnel, raised her left hand, and made it glow a little brighter. "You ready?"

Liz grunted as she tried to lift Max's body off the floor. "Can you maybe just grab one end of him without looking? I'll make sure that he's all steady, and I'll carry more than my share of the weight if I need to - but there's a lot of him to lift."

"Hmm." Maria considered, and then switched hands, leading the way with light using her right and extending the left behind her, almost touching Max. Quickly it became easier to keep him floating about two and a half feet up. "Now, if something attacks, I - I'm going to have to let him go. Can you...?"

"Yeah, I'll cushion his fall," Liz promised. It seemed a small compromise to make. "And if I cry out that something's coming up from behind..."

"I'll do what I can to take care of him, sweetie," Maria answered softly, and started to move forward.

They had negotiated through four junctions as Liz kept count, when Maria suddenly gasped and stopped. "What's wrong, girl?" Liz asked, suddenly worried.

"The line - it feels like it's been cut," she managed to choke out.

"Like something happened to..."

"No, it wasn't at that end. Like something snipped the connection between us, only a few tunnels away..."

"The beast," Liz breathed. She hadn't realized that the alien monster could disrupt their powers, but there wasn't anything else she could think of that would be here in Carlsbad that would do such a thing. "Which way was it?"

Maria gestured forward - they were at a four-way crossing at that time, and she had led the way confidently past the side tunnels before stopping. "Next right, and then a left..."

Liz extended her powers that way, and mumbled something obscene around her breath. The only thing she could sense in that way was apparently a dead end, which wasn't that useful in terms of keeping track of their enemy. Possibly it had learned from the organized reception they had formed for it back in the Chess cavern, and had found some way to hide itself from sensing powers, or... "We have to move," Liz said, picking the left cross tunnel and pushing Max ahead of her, grabbing Maria's arm and pulling her along behind. (With what was probably a jolt of adrenaline of her own, Liz now felt no difficulty in levitating Max on her own, and lighting the way, as she moved at a fairly brisk jog and helped Maria along.) "I don't suppose you can get your connection to Michael to show us an alternate route, one that's not blocked by a monster?"

Maria seemed to be trying to concentrate and keep the pace at the same time, and then she shook her head, dark honey waves of hair falling this way and that against navy spandex-clad shoulders. "It - it doesn't seem to be working."

"Okay, then." They came to another intersection, with a passage heading off to the right. This was more or less the direction that they wanted to head in, Liz figured, but she needed to be sure of more than that. Focusing her powers, she sensed the extent of the tunnels, simply looking for a path that would lead in the right direction without any dead ends. If the monster continued to mimic a dead end, this would see them staying well clear of it, Liz knew. Its best strategy would be to stop interfering with their maze-mapping powers, if it could, even letting Maria's route back to Michael show a passageway that the monster was occupying as being available. Could it control its own abilities so well, and reason intelligently enough to strategize? At this point, Liz wasn't about to put anything past the creature - but she had to take **some** risks, for Max's sake.

She kept checking the 'maze view' as they proceeded, navigating around wide loops that she hoped would get them where they wanted to go in the end, and it was a good thing, because those rechecks warned her of something that would otherwise have been sheer disaster. They were proceeding up a long, slightly curving tunnel, without any junctions except for one dead-end off to the right - when Liz realized that the dead-end tunnel was getting shorter. That had to be the monster, moving to intercept them or cut them off. They weren't close enough or fast enough to sneak through ahead of it, even if they wanted to be through with that thing coming up right behind them...

"We've got to turn back, find another way," Liz muttered, "How far back was it to the last junction..."

"No," Maria insisted, grabbing Liz's hand as she tried to scan backwards. "We've got to keep going this way. Get as close to that side junction where the monster's coming from as we can."

"What?" Liz blinked in bafflement. "Maria, going up against that thing by ourselves is sui-"

"No, it's not," Maria insisted. "We're both good at shielding, we work well together, and this tunnel is a fairly small cross-section. We can keep it away from us."

"Well, yeah, for a little while, five or ten minutes," Liz said, a little doubtfully. She hadn't really thought of shields herself, and that was bad - except for scanning, she was slipping into thinking of herself as a horror-movie victimette, (victimine?) instead of a strong and resourceful woman, ready to fight when she had to. "But I think we'll get tired faster than it will."

"We won't have to keep it up for ten minutes," Maria promised her. "Go on, look a little further." She waved up in the direction where the monster was waiting to slip in ahead of them. Still feeling puzzled, Liz extended her powers, and sensed something else, something that definitely did register with her powers, coming up the main corridor towards the junction. It would also arrive after the monster did, (the Beast was nearly there, the dead end only twenty or thirty feet long apparently and still shrinking,) and Liz couldn't really make out what it was. However, using the same process of elimination she had used to identify the Monster, she could make a guess at what Maria was thinking of.

"Alright, I'm ready to merge shields on your word," Liz said. "Actually, not quite on a word - Max, you know."

"Yeah, of course," Maria said. "Count of five okay? We should probably wait until we see the thing first."

"Be careful - it moves fast," Liz said.

They compromised - Liz let Max down gently as the 'dead end' was approaching close, and the two girls waited nervously until they could see it. The monster had apparently started to dawdle, much less certain of the way once it had reached what was to it a T intersection, and as far as Liz could make it they were only fifty feet away from that side passage when they stopped and waited. Then they spotted the tentacles, and it must have spotted them, and Liz and Maria brought forth their joined shield, pinkish-rose shading to blue, and the monster started to bash itself into it, drag its feet against the force field, and anything else it could think of. Liz was worried about feeling the same fear as last time if she met the thing's eyes, so she avoided even looking towards its head through the distortion effect of the field. Every contact of the monster into their defence seemed to draw energy out of Liz's heart, (and Maria's too,) and also tended to create the sensation of something sharp jabbing into her head, very hard. But she knew that they had no choice but to hold out, until...

Something that she couldn't make out seemed to flood down the corridor beyond the shields and surround the monster. It screamed with outrage, (seeming in that moment to have at least three voices, though Liz had only spotted the one distorted mouth,) and after a moment of indecision, turned around and galloped back up the tunnel. Maria held up a warning hand to Liz until whatever had so disconcerted their enemy seemed to have faded out, and then they dropped their shield and carefully, towing Max behind him, headed up to follow. Liz was keeping herself ready to create another shield at a moment's notice, and she knew that Maria was too.

They didn't need to. As they drew close to the T-intersection, Liz could make out the light of another shield, with many more colors in it, and the Beast hurling itself uselessly into it. As they got within fifteen feet, it noticed and turned back towards them, spent about two seconds preparing to spring at them, and then reconsidered and dashed back the way it had come. As the sound of tentacular treads faded into the Carlsbad distance, the second force field dissipated, leaving the two girls staring at what Liz had already confirmed, in her mind, was a rescue party.

Michael was there, of course, and Isabel. The three Antarian crew rounded out a party of five. As Liz sorted things out, if nobody was unaccounted for, that left Tess, Ava, Kyle, and Lonnie back in the Chess cavern - probably keeping a close guard over Alex, at Isabel's insistence.

"Thanks - thanks for the cavalry, guys," Liz managed to say, her breath suddenly short in relief. (Adrenaline crash, was that it?) "Sorry I messed up the plan, but - Max, he got hurt..." She turned back to Max, and was flabbergasted as he rolled over onto his side in mid-air, (how could anybody turn like that without friction?) let out a rather loud groan, and opened up his eyes. "Oh, sure, _now_ you wake up on me, bud!"

"Don't give my brother too hard a time, Liz," Isabel warned. "Whatever happened to you, I'll lay good odds it was only because he was trying to protect you."

Liz didn't even bother confirming that shrewd guess, but knelt down next to her fiancee. "Max, honey, you took a blow to your temple, and have what looks to me like a hairline skull fracture." Part of her wondered if Max was really aware enough to make a self-diagnosis, but somehow she could do nothing but give him a chance. "Do you need to go back to the ship's sick bay, or..."

"No, not now," he whispered. "Just let me look into your eyes, and have somebody else make a light, so that I can actually see her." With an ineffably bored sigh, Maria shone her hand into Liz's eyes, so bright that Liz had to bring up one hand to shade them, careful that Max could still make eye contact.

"You know, this seems incredibly familiar," she pointed out, giggling.

"That time, I needed to use my powers on you," Max reminded her needlessly. "Now, I'll need your help to focus them on myself. In a way, it'll be like sharing my healing gift with you for a moment. Is that alright? I can do this with Rayde; I have before, back home..."

How had Max gotten himself hurt back home, Liz wondered. Was it after the duel with Kivar? "No, no chance, if anybody is going to do this for you, then it's going to be me. Connect already."

"You know how to initiate a basic connection," Max pointed out. "It'll work more smoothly that way."

So Liz concentrated on Max's eyes, on forging a link between her own mind and soul with the sweet, lovable, and honourable man who lived behind those big brown eyes. Inevitably, a flood of imagery watched over her - Antarian people, and she struggled to figure out who they were, or at least how Max felt about them, to avoid getting lost in confusion. A powerful, friendly face, older than Max but somehow his equal in royal dignity - that had to be Vorjal. And staring at another man across a great circular empty space - an Antarian who was wearing a gold circlet and rich purple clothes, including a long robe - but his face was cruel and selfish, not what Liz would think of as truly royal in temperament. That must be Kivar, just before the duel started - and she was spared much 'footage' from the combat itself, but saw Max struggling out of the arena, with Kivar fallen and not moving within. She gasped - and was back in the tunnel with everybody else.

"Great, I feel much better," Max said. "But what - what happened? Where's the monster? And why am I floating in midair?"

"Oh, that's us," Maria said, and in co-ordination with Liz, they let Max drift downward. He landed on his feet, as Liz climbed back to a standing position herself, and hugged her. "For everything else - let's double-time it back to meet up with the others, and talk about it - when we safely can."

"I... I'm not sure that's the best idea, Maria," Raydeleen said softly. "The bait plan has indeed been 'messed up' pretty badly - no fault of yours, Liz, but I don't think that we'll lure it out into an open cavern again anytime soon."

"Oh, great," Liz muttered. "So what else do you propose, Rayde?"


	7. Chapter 7

"We know where the monster was, about two minutes ago," Michael said. "We know which direction it's going in, and I think that Liz has figured out a sort of way of tracking it through the tunnels, yes?"

"As long as it sticks with this way of 'hiding', yes," Liz said, not liking this. "But - well, are we going to just charge off, the eight of us? What about the rest of the posse?"

Michael and Rayde looked at Max, out of habit, but he seemed to still be a little woozy from his recent tumble and cure and wasn't immediately jumping into the leadership role. Isabel, also, wasn't about to take charge, and somehow Liz thought to herself that this was one of those situations where she couldn't let Michael take charge. (Rayde might be okay, but Liz wasn't sure if she'd take a position of authority over the Royal Four.) As Queen-to-be, it seemed to be up to her.

"Do any of you have a way of sending a message to the others?" she asked. "And giving them reliable directions for a rendezvous here?"

"Well, yes," Isabel admitted. "But if we're going hunting among the tunnels for the Beast, trying to run it to ground and give it battle wherever it went to hide - I, I'm not so sure that Alex will be of any help there."

Liz considered that objection. "Alright. Alex will go back to the ship and wait there, where he'll be safe. We don't really want too big a crowd down here, anyway." She counted off who was back there with Alex and made a snap judgement. "Kyle's to go with him, to make sure that he's safe on the way out, not that I really expect the Beast will be able to interrupt them en-route." She took a deep breath. "Will you be able to tell if they're actually willing to go?"

"Yeah, umm, just give me a minute." Isabel frowned, her face screwed up tight in concentration.

"Hey, wait a second," Michael insisted. "That critter is making tracks as we speak, and it'll be harder to track it your way the farther away it gets, right?"

Liz stood her ground with as much confidence as she could scrape up. "And it does us no good if we track it down and don't have enough firepower to make an end of it, Michael! There are three hybrid girls back there with an awful lot of juice, not to mention experience and inventive ways to use it, and we need to give them the time to reach us!"

"Yes," Max said, turning to Michael. "If you've got a problem with the way Liz is calling the shots, Michael, then you've got a problem with me. She's got an excellent point, as far as I can see..."

"_Big surprise_ that you can't see anything wrong with Liz!" Michael flared angrily. "She's the reason we're in this mess - she turned tail and _ran_, and you ran right along with her because you can't see straight when it comes to Liz Parker. You never could, ever since..."

"Michael, no," Maria said sharply, and Michael immediately stopped in midsentence. "You don't get to impugn Liz's courage like that - not until you've looked into that thing's eyes, and felt its power yourself." She took a deep breath. "But it would be a very good idea not to, because we really don't need to have someone else run screaming off into the night."

"We're good," Isabel said, as if she were coming out of a trance and had heard nothing of the argument and ensuing confrontation. Maybe she really hadn't. "Alex and Kyle are on their way back, though I'm worried that they may not sit tight if we don't come back in victory fairly soon. The girls, including my worser half, should be here in a minute and a half." She looked around. "What's been going on?"

"The monster has a power, in its gaze?" Rayde asked Maria. "Some sort of a panic reaction?"

"That's what I think," Maria said. "I was plenty scared already, but - but I knew the plan, and I wouldn't have broken, even with Liz and Max already gone, unless there weren't something more to it. And I definitely believe that Liz wouldn't have run first if something hadn't been twisting her mind to it."

"Okay, so nobody look into its eyes," Isabel summarized. "Do we need to have mirrored shades or something?"

"No, it seems pretty specific," Liz said. "I was just about staring at it, when I got - whammied. Stupid."

"We none of us knew about that danger," Max said. "I just hope that there aren't many more dangerous surprises."

"This may be a useful one," Eleeron said. He had been squatting down very low, possibly examining the floor of the tunnel along which the Beast had escaped, and then he turned and rose to a full stand, one forefinger extended in front of his face. (In the light of Michael's glowing hand, Liz noticed the human features of the Husk that Eleeron was wearing for this part of the mission, and also the smoothness with which he achieved the change in position - betraying a strength in his Antarian knees and leg muscles that not many human beings could match, she thought.) "There is a residue here that was not present in the tunnel that we used to reach this spot. I suspect that it might be left by the creature as it moves."

"Like a trail, which we could follow!" Liz concluded triumphantly. "A way to find the beast that won't become useless in just a few minutes."

"As long as it works," Michael pointed out. "If that trail is left by the monster's travel, it might be under deliberate control. It could have left that path as it _came_, and then sneak off into a side passage without leaving anything behind, so we take the wrong route."

"The monster is leaving something behind?" a new voice asked. Liz looked in that direction and was even more pleased to see Ava, Tess, and Serena coming towards them, two of them with a hand shining to light their way.

"Well, Michael, we'll try comparing the results from both techniques, and see where it gets us," Liz said. "And on that note, let's move out. Our friends are close enough to catch up to us."

But she hung behind a little, wanting to chat with Ava about all that had happened in the past hour or so.

#

"Come on, Liz, just keep on steady, you're doing a great job," Ava assured her as they made their way around yet another oddly angled turning. "Frankly - well, I don't know Max as well as you do, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's just doing the quiet thing because he wants to see how you handle it."

"Hmm." Liz considered this. "Does that suggest that if I make a really bad call, one that puts people on the team at risk, he'll suddenly pipe up and countermand me?"

"Maybe - if I'm right," Ava said. "But come on, you won't screw up. I know _you_ that well."

"Was Zan like that?" Liz generally didn't ask her friends questions like this about her long-lost love, but this time she couldn't help it.

"Um - not really. But, well, in some ways Zan was more insecure than Max is. He couldn't stand to let anybody else be running the show, even if it was just because Zan was letting them, to see what would happen."

"Not even - not even Lonnie? I've heard stories..."

"Well, depends on how you mince the definitions. There were times when Lonnie wasn't listening to what Zan told her, and he just let her go and learn her own lesson. Times when it was Lonnie and Rath off doing their own thing, and even when Lonnie and Zan were both running a plan equally, and not really doing any power-struggle politics between themselves." She sighed. "But Zan leaning back and letting Lonnie be in charge of any team that included him? Not really."

"Okay." Liz was thinking of something to ask Ava, along the lines of how she felt about Kyle staying behind, when Michael let out a holler from further up the line, so Liz made her way past several other people in dark jumpsuits to see what the fuss was all about. Michael, Rayde, and Max were all considering a Y-intersection.

"No residue, either way," Michael said. "No moving tunnel walls ahead on both forks, as far ahead as I can scan. We've been led down a false trail."

"I - I don't think so, Michael," Liz muttered. This wasn't anywhere near where Maria had first noticed the creature's influence, Liz thought, and though it was possible that the beast had managed to get here and then back away to the last junction without them noticing, she didn't think that was likely. "But I think that you might be right, that it's figured out a way to move ahead without leaving a track. Maybe that was just because it hurt itself, crashing against our shields, and now it's healed enough."

"So where is it, and how do we find it?" Michael demanded of her angrily.

"Two possibilities," Isabel suggested, stepping near. "Either it's gotten far enough away that it's out of your sensing range, Michael - or it's staying still and pretending to be a real dead-end."

"If it's got that much of a lead on us, then we should probably just figure out a way to get back to known territory and come up with a new plan," Max admitted regretfully.

"Yes, so we test the other possibility first," Liz said. "I count - um, seven dead-end passages within sensing range. Is that all anyone else has?"

There was a bit of frustrated sensing, visualizing, and counting. In the end everyone agreed - except the gruff skin Swander, who said that he counted eight. "Okay, make us a map," Liz told him. "Umm - anyone got paper and some kind of marking..." Swander just walked over to the wall and started marking out passages and dead-ends by changing certain molecules of the dark rock into a silvery-white color. "Okay, we'll have to remember to change that back, or else it's defacing a National Park," Liz noticed. "But this is good. Number off the deads - yeah, thanks." She felt very glad that he was using Latin numerals. "Number seven is the one that's too far away for me to sense easily - I assume that's the same for the rest of you?" It took a moment for everybody else to consider the map, and agree."

"So, I assume that everybody picks a dead end and sends some kind of energy pulse towards it?" Michael asked. "If one of them is really the Monster, it won't react the same way as a genuine rock wall."

"That's it, except I'm doing the picking," Liz told him. "Michael, you're on one, Max two, Isabel three, Tess four, Ava five, Rayde Six, Swander is seven since he can see it, and Eleeron is on eight."

"What about me?" Serena grumbled.

"I don't get a shot either," Liz pointed out. "Neither does Maria."

"Yeah, but you're terrible at targeted energy projection, and I'm great at it," Lonnie insisted.

"Nevertheless." Liz didn't really want to get into her true reasons - that she hadn't wanted to leave out the five hybrids that she knew and trusted, or the three trained Antarian soldiers, and she'd run out of targets at that point. "On the count of five - one, two, three, four, _five_!"

All eight of the aliens she'd named let loose with a blast of some sort of intricate light, which rushed down one of the tunnels of the Y intersection or the other. "I - I think I got it," Tess breathed. "It - it's still not moving, it's trying to bluff us out, but - but what I hit was an absorption field of some kind, not a real rock."

"Lead the way, Tess," Liz insisted, knowing that this would be faster than having everybody check the map to refresh themselves on the way to dead end four. Tess would know the route by which she'd sent out her pulse. She let Serena, Rayde, and Swander crowd in after Tess, and fell into step next to Max.

"Well handled," he told her with a little sly smile that suggested to her that Ava had been right. "I liked the bit with counting out all the numbers yourself." He looked like he wanted to say something more, but they were both a little out of breath at that point. Liz smiled at him and kept following the rest of the 'pack.'

"Wait!" Serena suddenly hissed, reaching out to gently pull Tess back, just as they were about to turn round the final corner. "Strategy! Do we really want to charge in, shields blazing or whatever, giving it no choice but to run away again? We have no idea how long a tunnel there is on the other side of that thing, and if the plan is still to slowly squeeze it to death between our shields, we'd have to wait until it wanders into a dead end, or a loop that we know the extent of."

"And it knows these caves much better than we do," Maria pointed out uncomfortably.

"Just a second," Tess said, and crept forward to poke her head around the corner. In a few seconds she was back. "Just wanted to check, it **is** there."

"Okay, what's your plan, Serena?" Liz asked, as Max nodded at her approvingly.

"I don't have it all yet," Serena admitted reluctantly. "But if we can - can lure it back here, into this corridor, and away from the side passage - with some of us in each side, we'll be in great formation for the endgame."

"I don't think it'll buy any of us now as helpless prey," Isabel said slowly. "Not even Maria and Liz - not after they shielded together and drove it away. That's assuming that it can recognize any of us, but I don't think that's such a stretch."

"And the one person who is relatively helpless isn't here," Serena added. Isabel glared at her. "No, that was the only call we could make at the time. And even if we had the perfect bait, I'm not sure if that canny creature would go for it as long as the rest of us are anywhere near."

"So how can we get it to come towards us?" Michael asked slowly.

"Can we - can we change what it's aware of?" Liz asked, turning reluctantly towards Tess. "Is its brain anything like what you'd be able to mind warp, Tess?"

Tess considered that big question for a long time. "Maybe, just maybe - not the same way that I'd trick a mind that's more - sentient, but I think that after that first close contact, I've got a bead on it." She drew in a deep breath. "I - I'm scared, though. If this doesn't work - I think the monster's mind might be able to drag me in and chomp on me just as badly as its real tentacles and teeth could."

"Is there any way that we can help protect you, if the worst starts to happen?" Liz asked.

Tess sighed softly, and nodded. "Yes. You and Maria - the other hybrid girls don't have the right orientation to their powers, nor the guys, or the hired help."

"But we're the ones who can - what, shoot back blasts of telepathic energy at the thing until it lets you go?" Maria asked, confused. "I don't think anyone's ever listed that among my talents before."

"No, it's not that simple," Tess said. "If this goes wrong, you won't be able to hurt the beast enough to make it let me go, or do anything to pull my mind free. The only way to save me will be to hold me steady," and here, Tess nodded first at Maria... "And then, fashion a decoy of my mental self, which it will then concentrate on holding for just long enough."

From the new tilt of Tess' head, she considered that to be Liz's job, which shocked her thoroughly. "Me? Create a false clone of - of your mind? Why would you think that I could do that?"

"Well, you did it for yourself," Tess pointed out. "In our lesson yesterday, on diversionary tactics. I told you to create a mental image of yourself, which would fool anybody trying to level a psychic attack at you. You did it great, and I don't see any reason you couldn't do the same on my behalf."

"But - but..." Liz had put that exercise out of her mind, partly because Tess had seemed too unimpressed by her performance at the time. But now - "Can **you** do this mental decoy thing, Tess?"

"Well yes, under good circumstances, but if the Beast's mind gets me, my powers will not avail me. And the two of us are apparently the only ones with enough of a naturally creative mind to accomplish it. Come on, get ready."

Liz sighed, and stepped up to follow Tess at a distance of something like five or six feet, Maria following her. Tess stepped out into full view of the monster, and relaxed when it seemed unsure whether to attack her or run away. "We'll need our teams in position before I try the lure," she realized. "Probably our strongest five on the other side of the junction, there - so they can move in when I get the Beast to chase us back here for fifteen feet or so."

"Okay, you pick 'em, then," Liz suggested.

"No, after you," Tess countered with an overly formal bow. Liz turned around to Max, but he evidently wasn't about to get her off the hook this time.

"Okay - Rayde, Eleeron, Swander..." That was easy enough, picking the full Antarians - and now two of the hybrids. "Serena, and Ava?"

"Got it," Ava agreed, following the other four into position. "We won't let you down."

"Never that," Liz agreed. Silently she wondered if she'd stacked the deck too far, that the six of them who stayed behind might have a harder time keeping the Beast contained, but there was no time to worry about it now. Tess concentrated, and Liz felt/heard, like a faraway gust of air, the wrenching of subjective reality that her powers triggered, even though it was hardly aimed at Liz herself. Liz tensed herself, wondering what the signal would be if Tess got into trouble, how either she or Maria would know...

And then Tess was running back away from the intersection, grabbing Liz's arm, and Maria and Max were moving too, and as Liz forced herself to a jog she realized that it had worked. The faint sound of tentacles in motion could just be heard over many footsteps, and Liz tried to count paces, knowing that it wouldn't be long before...

Tess and Maria turned around on either side of her, and Liz made her spin so quickly that she lost her balance. Tess wasn't holding her anymore, (obviously,) but Maria reached out to steady her best friend, and Max moved in to occupy a space that Tess was leaving for him on Liz's other side. Michael was next to Maria, and Isabel on the other side of Tess - not quite the core six of them, that would be with Alex instead of Tess, but Tess was worthy of being here, at...

Liz was nearly so lost in thought that she missed her cue to join in forming a united front of barrier energy, which would have been unfortunate. In fact, she was late enough that the shield segments that the others had summoned nearly failed for the lack of a unifying bridge in the middle, and then without any direct instructions on that behalf from their 'owners', the green of Max's field and the blue of Maria's spread together, trying to find unity by joining together. But then Liz's rosy light filled in the narrow space in between, and blended with other shades, to become one part of an actual rainbow of alien power - not just rose-pink and green and blue, but purple and cornsilk yellow and a sort of a brick orange..

Through the six rippling veils of color, (they hadn't been summoned in parallel, but in series as it were, but now that the six-fold shield had solidified Liz felt certain that there were now six layers thick of energy protecting her at any one spot,) she saw the monster scream in rage, and spin around, trying to make its break for safety. All retreat, too, had been barred from it as well, courtesy of another joined shield from the five aliens who had gone the other way. It must have learned by this point that matching its strength against their shields was pointless, because instead the beast turned sideways and started bashing its head against the tunnel wall.

"Quickly," Max called, returning to the role of leader as he saw an unexpected crisis. "If it can actually break through into another open space, we'll lose it, and I don't think we'd ever catch it in a tight spot one more time."

So Liz stepped forward, close to the shield, and took yet another preparatory deep breath. To move the shield together, all six of them would need to visualize the transition at the same time, which was a mental manoeuvre requiring the utmost care. If anybody was so much as a millimetre out of sync, the force field might collapse explosively. Considering that the monster was probably tougher and able to withstand such a blast better - the aftermath would probably be quite unfortunate.

But Max had called 'forward', so forward they would have to go. Max and Maria each held out their hands for her, though there was hardly much room in the tunnel for the six of them to manage such a link comfortably. But anything that might better link them all seemed to be a good idea, and anyway, Liz was not about to refuse an opportunity to hold hands with the man she loved or her oldest friend in a situation like this.

"On the three," Max whispered softly, and a sort of mental picture flashed into Liz's head - a progress bar marking off the time more precisely than words could. "One, two, **three.**" And with that, all six of them pushed the shield further out into the tunnel. Somehow Liz could tell that the other side was also compressing the space from the other side.

Max signalled for them to start after moving nearly a foot, just as the inner surface of the shield was about to make contact with one of the monster's tentacles as it followed the creature's body from side to side.

"What - what about the air in there?" Liz asked. "Do our shields let gas particles through? If not, then we're going to be fighting higher and higher pressure as we compress it more tightly."

From the look he favoured her with, Max seemed honestly a little surprised that she was bringing up that point now. "I'm letting through air molecules of recognized types - oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water vapour," he said. "We don't want to let every gas particle through, in case the creature can emit a noxious or incapacitating vapour. Didn't we _mention_ this in the shield training?"

"You didn't with me," Isabel muttered. "Probably the four - err, seven of you had time to agree to it on the way over from Antar though."

"Okay, well, no big harm done," Liz said. "Isabel and I can adjust our energy accordingly. And don't forget the argon, there's enough of that, especially down here, that it might be a problem."

It became slightly anticlimactic to keep squeezing the shields in from either side, especially as the monster became constricted enough that it could no longer pound on the walls and started to whine a little piteously. Liz struggled once or twice against feelings of guilt, but kept reminding herself that the beast was, at its heart, a wild and ferocious thing - it could feel pain, yes, but would cause death and destruction if it was let go free, and there seemed to be no practical way to keep it safely in captivity.

"Wait a second," she asked as they prepared to squeeze it for another half inch or so. "You said that Nicholas planted an egg here - is there any way it could have laid an egg of its own in this time?"

"Wait a second; doesn't that take two of them?" Isabel asked, startled by the notion.

"Usually, on earth - but not always, and for something alien..." Liz trailed off, looking up to Max for some reassurance.

"For this species, it doesn't always take two parents, no - but it's not old enough to 'lay' at all," Max said confidently. "That's another factor in the timing of why we came here now."

"And we're so glad that you're here," Isabel told him with a little grin.

It was after three pushes from their side, in the middle of a similar effort from Rayde and her team that the creature finally died, letting loose a faint and strangled cry, and its body half-melting and then solidifying into an unrecognizable shape. They weren't sure that that was the end of it for a while - Max and several of the other aliens took turns connecting with the remains and looking for any possible sign of life, and even after they were all reassured the 'corpse' was dismembered - some of the most organized and complicated chunks blasted into char or vaporized into component parts. The rest were scattered around the caverns and the desert above. Liz was a little disgusted by the 'thoroughness', but if these sorts of precautions would make triply certain that no alien monster would attack her loved ones back here on Earth...

Something occurred to her with that thought. If she was right in her guess that this monster had been the 'enemy' that Future Max had referred to, then they had finally headed off that possibility once and for all. She had not really thought of it for years - not since the night that Jim Valenti had proposed to Maria's mother, and Liz had resolved to herself that Future Max's prescription, that Tess had to stay with the Royal Four, didn't necessarily require his means to that end, that in that timeframe, Max needed to fall out of love with Liz herself. She had even admitted to Max that the 'Kyle incident' had been faked, but had never told anyone the full story, except for Maria...

And just at that point, Max was by her side. "Looks like we're almost done here," he said. "Back to the ship, and we'll take off before next morning. Probably land somewhere a bit more convenient at least once - Las Cruces, or Roswell, or both."

"Good," Liz said. "I've got loose ends to tie up with my classes this term, and need to see my parents at least once before - before we go." Max nodded. "And I think I'll have a story to tell you guys about tonight at dinner - something that nobody has heard yet except for Maria."

"Really?" Max said with a very curious and intrigued smile. And then, he repeated "Dinner!" with a lot more emphasis. "God, I'm starving! Feel like I could eat a cow - live."

"Eww, please don't." Liz bumped her hips against Max's playfully. "But I'm not surprised, we didn't get much of lunch eaten, and it must be..." Automatically she lifted her left wrist, but there was no watch on it - it hadn't really been comfortable to wear against the thick cuffs of the battle suit, and anyway she had probably forgotten when they'd been wakened so early. "Any idea what time it is, local?"

"Hmm." Max pulled a tiny little device out of one pocket, a bit narrower than a credit card, touched its surface a few times, and then blinked in some surprise. "Seven thirty."

"In the evening?" Liz exclaimed. At this time of year, night would have closed in hours ago. "How? I mean, I know that we could have taken a few hours getting ourselves lost and then found again, but after that, the final battle didn't take long..."

"And it's been more hours that we've been cleaning up," Max pointed out. "For one thing, we didn't get up as early as you might have thought we did, just because we were both tired out." Liz nodded, accepting that. "And 'lunch' was quite late - after the stories, and the chess game, and so on."

"Okay." Liz sighed, accepting those explanations. "So yeah, I imagine we'll all be able to pack in a big dinner, after a day like this. And the ship should be able to take off as soon as we're all there, though maybe later in the night will be less conspicuous." She looked up at him. "And when we're alone together, in your cabin, are you up for a repeat of last night, or do we have to wait until we're on the program?"

"Hey, I let you have last night on the 'we could die tomorrow' excuse," Max laughed. "More seriously, though - I want you every minute of every day and night, Liz Parker, but still - my own choice is that we do this right, and that would seem to include being careful about anything that impacts our family planning. No birth control is foolproof, and that goes double for people in our circumstances."

"Right, of course, that makes sense," Liz said, sighing. "Careful. But isn't it supposed to be the girl who's naturally inclined to be careful about getting pregnant, and the guy who's so overcome with - desire that he can't help himself."

Max shrugged. "This - this might be overreacting, but I have to admit, I always see Maria's face, that night."

"What, when they - they put Danyel into his pod?" Liz asked.

"No, not about Danyel. The night she lost Keva." Liz gasped softly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to - but yeah. The look on her face when she first saw me, not that she ever blamed me for not being around - and at the memorial ceremony we had. I know that even - well, it's a slim chance, even with what we know, that you'll lose our baby, but..."

"Who knows?" Liz put in. "It happens often enough for regular people here on Earth. And for all the talent of Antarian healers and doctors, there's obviously a lot that they don't know yet about human and hybrid biology."

"Yes, but let's not worry about it now," Max pointed out. "Come on - there's nothing more for me to do here - let's go back to the ship."

"What, you're not going to wait and be the last one out, like a good leader?" Liz teased him.

"I think half the team or more is ahead of us," Max said with a smile. "Rayde and her people are going to spend another little while searching for any dangerous residue, and Michael and Maria were still disposing of a tentacle chunk, last I heard. They might have gotten distracted in some reasonably comfortable cavern."

Liz shook her head. "Alright, well I'm certainly good to go." She offered her arm, and Max took it with a smile. They'd only gone through one other cavern and two tunnels before meeting a tall, voluptuous figure in a black suit. "Hello, Serena," Liz said, with a grateful nod.

"Hey, Parker," Serena put in. "Any word on my ride, boss?"

Max looked down at Liz, and she shrugged. "I - I still can't say for sure, but I don't think you should hold out hope." Liz tensed slightly, more than half expecting an explosion of anger as the tempestuous New York hybrid realized that her hoped-for reward was being drawn away once the job was over.

But Serena just nodded - almost serenely. "Sorta figured that, but I had to ask. Are any of the gang going to be hanging around once you weigh anchor? My old North-eastern buddy and her man?"

"Yeah, neither of them has expressed any interest in a ride to Antar yet, and nobody's talked about wanting them to come," Liz admitted. "It'll be hard to be apart from Ava - like it was difficult to be so far away from Maria for so long - but I know that she doesn't want to move in on Tess' territory, and Tess seems to love her new home."

"Like a planet isn't big enough for both of them?" Serena pointed out. "And Antar isn't all there is over that way, either. Have you seen any of the other planets in that sector, King Max?"

"Well yes, but I haven't had much time for real exploring," Max admitted ruefully. "Larek invited us over to Rahlicx to throw a feast in his honour, after Kivar was dispatched, and - and there was a second Summit meeting with all the planetary leaders, and a few other important figures, on Taliernar, with Duchess Kathana hosting."

"Alright." Serena nodded, and the three of them continued on the way out, Serena falling into step next to Liz. "Well, do keep me in mind, and if you have another ship doing a trip - or something like that gateway you mentioned..."

"You'll have a chance to come see it all for yourself," Max promised her. "Count on it."

"I will, your majesty."

Liz smiled to herself at that. It **would** be convenient to go back and forth between Roswell and Antar, more quickly than driving back from campus. She wondered what Antar would really be like for her - surely nobody else's descriptions could really do justice to the sense of living on a completely different planet.

#

"...I was trying hard to keep from crying as we danced to the music," Liz told the entire company, after finishing a truly excellent dinner aboard 'Czechoslovakia.' "He - Future Max sort of spun me around, and I let my eyes close. There was a kind of wash of love that came through me from him, and that surprised me - not just that he loved me, but that it was a feeling uncomplicated by grief or uncertainty or anything else. Unconditional." She looked over at Max, thinking that now she finally understood how the two of them could feel something so simple for each other.

"And - there was a new sensation of air around me, and at first I thought that it was just a breeze. Maybe there was a breeze. But when I opened my eyes again, he was gone, and I was alone on the roof." And at that point, I couldn't keep the tears back, she thought to herself, but didn't admit that out loud. "And - well, that's basically the story, the secret part. You guys who were around in Roswell probably know as much about the aftermath as I do, though this revelation may cast different lights on various details.

Serena instantly spoke up. "So - so exactly what did he say about - about Serena?" She was clearly reserving judgement on whether the name meant her, in this context, or if that was a coincidence.

Liz took a deep breath. "Not much - he only ever mentioned her once. He was - well, he was about as close-mouthed and enigmatic about my future as you might expect a time traveller to be from the movies, though in his case I never really saw the reason for secrecy, given that he had a great chance to arm me against disaster, but never mind. Serena - would be a friend of mine one day, and that she had told him, because of the quantum mechanics of time travel, both he, and our Max, would be destroyed if they came into contact."

"Quantum mechanics?" Serena puzzled over that phrase, trying to figure out how it fit in. "Quantum mechanics is concerned with the ultra-microscopic view, of course, how subatomic particles work and interact, and a person like Max isn't really a coherent entity over time in a quantum-mechanical perspective. The particles that make up him - or anyone else - are constantly being exchanged, swapping in and out of his cells, as he breathes, eats, and takes a crap. So how could contact between them be that devastating?"

"I'm not sure," Liz said, wondering if Serena would continue. She was coming to her own decision about the Serena identity now.

"Of course, the time travel would have brought particles back to loop over their own previous time, but there'd be no certain way to keep them from colliding with each other - Max could easily breathe the sae oxygen particle out and in at the same moment," Serena continued to muse.

"What if it's not about matter, but energy?" Maria asked. "Quantum mechanics has to say something about energy - is there energy inside Max that doesn't change over the years?"

"We're not sure yet," Rayde admitted. "I think that's a question that neither Antarian science nor the scholars in the use of our powers can answer yet."

"I've thought about all of this before," Liz said, "and maybe it's not as microscopic as the reference to Quantum Mechanics made it sound. Future Max seemed to be somewhat aware of the changes that I was making in the timeline - usually it tended to take a little while before those changes 'stabilized', but what if that effect would speed up, the more directly relevant the changes were to himself? If Future Max met Max, everything Future Max did or said would become part of his memories of the past, which would change him, making him react, and so on in an endless cycle."

"That sounds like the winner to me," Max decided. "But no offense, Serena, you can talk more with Liz about what this means for your relationship a bit later. I'm still a bit concerned about the future safety of planet Earth."

"You don't think that the Creature of Carlsbad was the danger that Future Max came back to stop?" Ava asked him.

"Not for sure, no. Maybe I'm being overly cautious - from the hints that my future self dropped, it seems unlikely that he or Isabel or Michael ever went back to Antar, and without going there to learn about the egg, I don't really see how anybody could have destroyed the Creature. As long as that entity was here on Earth, there doesn't seem to be any reason for Kivar to launch a more conventional attack force - but he's not the only one I might have referred to as 'our enemies', not knowing the events of that time-line."

"And what is that leading to, Maxwell?" Michael asked in his most laid-back tone. He and Maria were sitting snuggled up together at the table. (They'd insisted on armless chairs to make this easier.)

"It's another good reason for what I was already planning," Max admitted. "That the Royal Four, and their chosen partners, should all come back to Antar - and that it's more important than I realized that we consolidate our power base there, and establish the portal link back to Earth as soon as possible. Just in case."

"Well, am I then to assume that you're issuing an invitation?" Isabel asked him pointedly. "I know that you've talked to Liz about taking her back with you, but..." She let the obvious conclusion to that sentence go unsaid.

"Yes, I suppose I am," Max said, nodding in appreciation for such a good opening. "Isabel, I understand now, as I did then, some of your reasons for not coming with us last time. But Vilandra's reputation will no longer be an issue on Antar for you. We've established the precedent that we live on Antar as unique individuals, connected to the Royal Four of Sanren's time, but responsible only for our own choices and crimes. Also Vilandra's own story is not as tarnished as you feared, though there's still some doubt, and a few people who believe the worst, but... I want my sister to come back with me this time, to see all that I've accomplished, and greet the Antarian people as one of their princesses."

"Princess Isabel," Alex said out loud. "That does have something of a ring to it." Isabel shrugged with as much diffidence as she could muster, but Liz thought that she was warming quickly to the whole idea.

"And - and as premature as it might be to say this much - I do hope that the two of us can celebrate the loves that we both found on Earth - by marrying in a double ceremony," Max said. He was holding Liz tightly under the table, where she alone could tell, and know how nervous he was about this.

Isabel jumped up, her temper flaring even behind a mouth that kept threatening to show some fraction of a smile. "_God_, Max, don't they have manners on Antar? No matter what you hope or wish for, Alex and I getting married is a subject that's supposed to be broached by - well, by one of us, first of al. Not for you to meddle in with your talk of a royal ceremony, and..."

"Well." Alex chuckled. "Then if I let Max beat me to the punch, allow me to minimize the offense in lapse of time as much as I can, at least." He got up out of his chair and knelt next to Isabel on one knee. "I - I didn't bring the diamond ring, it's back in my lockbox in the dorm room, because I was worried about it getting lost in all the excitement - or somebody finding it at the wrong time. Had pretty much decided to wait until Spring Break to ask you - before Michael showed up."

Isabel let her eyes fill with tears, shot one more half-angry look at Max for precipitating this on his own terms instead of letting it develop naturally, and then blurted out, "Yes, I will."

"Hey, don't I get to actually ask the question first?"

"We all know what you're asking, honey," Maria put in affectionately. "Frankly, I think that you're doing better to let your actions speak for you, instead of insisting on putting things out loud. You do sometimes flub the talking part when it gets really important, old friend."

"Hey, let the man speak his piece," Michael countered, broadly grinning as he took the other side. "He's no worse than the rest of us when it comes to putting his foot in his mouth from time to time - and I managed alright, when it was my turn, didn't I? Didn't Max?"

"I - I will listen to anything you tell me, sweetie," Isabel told him, effectively ending the debate. "I do feel as if I've already given the only answer that matters, but if you want me to answer the same question after you've said it out loud, that I can certainly do for you."

"Okay." Alex paused a moment, and then shook his head. "Dammit, I knew how I was going to start a minute ago!"

Everybody laughed at that point. "Maybe you should wait and try again when we're not all watching," Kyle suggested.

"I think that's a great idea," Isabel told him, and even Alex had to admit that he saw the wisdom of that much.

But they toasted the second royal engagement for a long while, and had more singing and dancing and stories, and it was a long time before anybody was alone together that night.


	8. Epilog

It seemed so odd to Liz when she saw Max sitting in the Crashdown booth. Nobody was making a big deal out of him being there - but then, even the wait staff on duty at the moment were new girls who wouldn't have recognized him from his time as a regular, years ago, or known much about his 'disappearance.' The only thing that he was wearing that didn't fall under the umbrella of 'perfectly normal American street clothes' was the gold chain around his neck, disappearing beneath the front of a pale blue Dartmouth sweatshirt that might have originally been his adoptive fathers'. And only Liz would know, she suspected, what was hanging at the end of that necklace. She had rejected all of the 'Antarian traditional' choices for an engagement pendant that Rayde had shown her, and found something up at the Mesaliko reservation gift shop that seemed perfect for her to give to Max.

"So how was it?" Max asked as she slid into the seat next to him.

"Hard," Liz admitted, leaning against her beloved's shoulder and sighing. Max's hand came up to start stroking her hair, which did start to relax her a bit. "I - I know that it was the right thing to do, telling my parents in person, but - well, not being able to say anything about just where we're going, give a firm date for when I'll be back, even to explain why I think this is worth dropping out of school so suddenly."

"Did your Dad scream at you?" Max asked.

"I think if my Dad really let loose, you'd have heard him down here," Liz said, with another sigh. "No, he didn't even raise his voice, but that 'we're disappointed in you' look that he kept shooting at me was worse. And my mom - my mom cried, a little."

Max stayed silent for a moment, and then, trying to balance humour and sensitivity in his tone, he asked, "So, you up to go through the whole thing again, with different parents?"

"Huh?" Liz sat up a bit straighter to shoot a look of her own at Max's face. "I thought that Isabel was going to do her farewell with your folks alone - you said it would be too hard to see them again just for a while." Liz tried not to be reproachful, but she couldn't imagine not seeing her own family if she only had a brief visit back to Earth."

"Yeah, well, those plans have changed," Max said. "My mom wants to hold a big dinner party, for the eight of us - her and my dad, Isabel and Alex, Michael and Maria, you and me."

"Hmm." Liz considered that. "Oh, boy."

"What?"

"Do you think she knows that - well, that Michael and Maria are married now, that we're engaged, and so are Isabel and Alex?"

"Ohh." Max considered that. "All depends on Isabel - she might have spilled details like that, or maybe not. Come to think of it, almost certainly they've guessed about her. She **never** takes Alex's ring off, she wouldn't have done it for the family."

"And your mom doesn't strike me as the type to 'guess' quietly about a detail like that," Liz said. "She'd have asked Isabel about it."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Max said. "So, dinner's at seven, we're supposed to be there by six thirty. Are you in?"

"I'm in the mood for a party, sure." Liz laughed a bit harder than the situation really called for. "What about now? Do you want to get out of here?"

"Nah, I've got a burger on the way," Max said, grinning at her. "You want to order something for yourself, when it comes?"

"Oh, sure, I can eat, definitely." Liz reached for the new menu, which she wasn't that familiar with since Thanksgiving or so. "Maybe a Comet chickenburger, with Saturn rings."

#

Max and Liz spent the rest of that afternoon together in Roswell and the surrounding desert, as Liz tied up a few loose ends that didn't have to do with home or her parents. There were still two weeks left on the tentative schedule before 'Czechoslovakia's departure for Antar, (The departure date was only really likely to be moved forward, not pushed back.) Still, Liz felt a kind of urgency in her time left on Earth, which hadn't occurred to her the last time she had planned to leave the planet with Max - possibly because the notion of Antar, and what it was like for people to be there instead of Earth, had become more real to her.

They drove out to look for the spot where they had dug up the message Orb, so long ago, and along the road where Max had crashed the Jeep, and landed himself in hospital. The Jeep had been sold off since he'd been gone, so they borrowed the Jetta from Maria's mother, and Liz drove. Max wanted to go see the Pod Chamber again, but Liz didn't really want to see the wreck that had been made of that special place when the Granilith had blasted off, so he dropped the idea for that day.

And his next idea was to go together to the fortune teller who had set the stage for Liz's experiences with Future Max. Even though neither of them really believed the suburban lady dressed up in borrowed gypsy clothes and accent really had a line in to the secrets of the cosmos, it was a fun experience, and their readings were both glowingly positive, with only a few warnings about challenges to be overcome and the importance of communicating with the people that you cared for. (Possibly as a good cold reader, she had been able to sense the love and happiness that both of them felt, even seeing them separately, and judged that an overall positive message was most likely to be accepted without questions.)

"So, what's up for tomorrow?" Liz asked as they headed back towards Roswell.

"Isabel wants our help in moving her stuff back into the family home, the things that she can't take along," Max said, and Liz sighed playfully. Alex's things would stay in the small off-campus apartment that he'd been sharing with Kyle, even though Kyle would need to find another roommate to get the rent paid, and both Ava and Serena had promised to take care of Liz's own things when Serena moved into their residence room, but Isabel had to give up a single, which wouldn't stay vacant long. They'd already carted boxes and small furniture out to the starship, crowding it in every space that could be used for that purpose for a few days, and Liz had guessed that she'd be helping with the unloading as well, but it wasn't really somthing that she looked forward to, even with Max and her other friends there.

"Alright, I guess."

"What about you and your parents, do you think?" Liz had mentioned to Max that she did want to spend more time with her parents, even though her choice to tell her about 'the big trip' that she'd be taking first off might be counterproductive to that goal. Of course, if she hadn't given any kind of explanation, they'd have been hounding her with questions about why she'd left campus for a few weeks before Spring Break, but her main reason was that she hoped Mom and Dad would be able to accept the notion before she left, instead of just feeling angry that she'd spent a few weeks with them pretending that everything was okay and sprung the truth on them the last chance she could.

"Not tomorrow, I think - well, I can call and test the waters, I suppose. But for really trying to spend quality time - it'll have to be the day after at the earliest, I think."

"Okay." Max nodded, and considered. "How about dinner tonight, back at Senor Chao's?"

Liz laughed. "Of course, we **have** to! And sometime before we go, lunch at the Olde Towne."

"I think that we can arrange that," Max admitted. "If you don't mind at least going dutch."

"Yeah, yeah, it'll be my treat. What else am I going to use my pocket cash on, if not spend it on you, boy?"

Max smiled slightly. "I have a sort of weird idea. Do you still have that journal that you used to write the uncensored story of your life in?"

"Umm - well, yeah. More than one, since - since I first met you. Why?"

"Weird idea, but - when you leave for good, leave them somewhere that your parents will be able to find them."

"Do you really think that they'll read my private stuff? Do you want them to?" Liz shook off confusion at the whole notion. "They might start to think I'm crazy, if they did."

"Maybe, or they might just start to wonder." Max shrugged. "It was just a notion. With our parents, Isabel and I don't have so easy a way of breaking them into the notion gently, since they don't know that we keep diaries or anything."

"You could leave some correspondence or alien-related files on Isabel's computer, if you think that they might snoop through that," Liz suggested.

"Well - maybe."

#

When she came out the front door of the Evans house to investigate the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, Liz was surprised to see Maria getting out of the Jetta herself. (She and Michael had borrowed it in mid-afternoon - cars being somewhat scarce among the young people for these few days and frequenty horse-traded.) "Where's your hubby, girl?"

Maria smiled just a little. "He - he stayed on at the ship, said that he'd ride a bike into town." That reference confused Liz a little, as she hadn't known that there was a motorcycle available near where they had parked Czechoslovakia, but Maria was continuing, her eyes bright with tears. "We - we got a message from Antar, Liz, about Danyel."

"Oh." Liz immediately hurried forward and put an arm around her friend's midriff. "What did they say about him?"

"Well, he had a - two cardiac episodes, actually. Something about the same genetic reactions that kept him from breathing on his own, were causing more problems with the - I didn't follow exactly what they had to do with his heart, but..."

"I know it must be so hard to have him going through trials, feeling powerless to help him and so far away from your son," Liz started, "but..."

"No, that - that's not all of it," Maria said, interrupting the speech. "They - they tried a radical therapy, some sort of genetic integration injection. We gave cousin Kelim the authority to approve medical decisions on Danyels' behalf. So, he thought it was worth taking a chance on this treatmant, and - and it worked better than they expected. _Much_ better."

Liz's breath caught in her throat for a moment. "What does better mean?"

"They - the doctors said that he'll be ready to come out of the pod, if he keeps responding to the therapy well and his immune system doesn't reject - anything, he'll be able to be removed from the pod in under an Antarian day." Liz gasped again, this time in disbelief and happiness for her friend. "They wanted us to decide if we wanted them to do that while we were gone, or wait until we get back there."

"Ohh." Liz considered that choice, realizing how much of a dilemma it might be if she had to choose it for her own child. "Have you decided?"

"Yes." Maria nodded, and smiled in a way that made her face seem oddly angelic. "It - it seems crazy that we're not going to be there for that moment. It wasn't like how I always hoped and expected that he'd come out. But - but I'm not going to let my son stay in that pod longer than he medically needs to, just because I want to be there to meet him when he comes out. Our reunion will come just as soon either way."

Liz nodded. "That makes a lot of sense. I'm so happy for you." And there, on the front path to the driveway of the house, she hugged Maria.

Oddly, when she thought of those days and weeks later on, that moment was the first one that occured to her. Not seeing Max in the hallway in his alien outfit, not him asking her to marry him, or making love for the first time, or finally destroying the monster. Just hearing from her oldest friend that her precious little boy, who would later become Liz and Max's godson, was ready to come out from under his little bushel, and the two of them embracing in their joy.

"Well, come on inside," Liz said. "Dinner's almost ready to serve, and Max, Isabel, and Alex will be eager to hear the news."

"Hmm." Maria considered. "Can I talk about my baby in front of the Evanses though? I know I can't mention incubation pods."

"Well, we'll figure out some way to pass the news on," Liz reassured her, opening the door.


End file.
